Xena: Warrior Princess - Crossroads
by allen.bair
Summary: "Eli" was the Xena writers' attempt at incorporating the Gospel story and the rise of Christianity into the series. This is an attempt at retelling that story arc as it should have been done, using the life of Christ augmented with source material from Buddhism, Hinduism, and early Christianity.
1. Chapter 1

And the Blessed One replied: "I am not the first Buddha who came upon earth, nor shall I be the last. In due time another Buddha will arise in the world, a Holy One, a supremely enlightened One, endowed with wisdom in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader of men, a master of angels and mortals. He will reveal to you the same eternal truths which I have taught you. He will preach his religion, glorious in its origin, glorious at the climax, and glorious at the goal, in the spirit and in the letter. He will proclaim a religious life, wholly perfect and pure; such as I now proclaim."

Ananda said: "How shall we know him?"

The Blessed One said: "He will be known as Metteya, which means 'he whose name is kindness.'"

The Gospel of Buddha XCVII:12-15

Chapter 1

It was a bright but cold day as the six men approached the mud brick and wood house in the small village. The village was like many they had passed through on their journey west. Children played in the roads, goats, chickens, and sheep wandered near their owners' homes, some were tied up, others were not. They passed by several armed men in red tunics and iron breastplates and helmets patrolling the village, wearied looks on faces that were just as foreign here as their own.

This was not their own home, or even their homeland. They had crossed great towering mountains, seen the wonders of great civilizations and cities in their twilight, and crossed great blistering deserts to make this journey, and now, after two years of traveling on sore, bare feet, their long journey was finally at an end. The star which had appeared in the sky on the night of his birth had finally led them here.

The six men were out of place in this land. They wore no beards, their heads were kept shaved. They wore only yellow robes. They carried only bowls for eating, the clothes on their backs, strings of beads to assist in their meditations, and gifts for the child whom they sought and his family. They were out of place, and they knew it and felt it from the stares which they received from the local people, but they were unconcerned by it. If they were right, nothing else in all of the universe mattered as much as the child which had been born and which lived in this house.

They had set out from their own homeland of Ghandara far to the east two years prior when the new star had appeared in the heavens. These men who watched the stars were overjoyed when they saw it, and immediately took it to their own devoted King, Menander II, who rejoiced to here that the long awaited One might finally have been born. The simple, humble monks wanted to waste no time in locating the long awaited one, and their king agreed. He dispatched with them gifts befitting the new great one of gold, myrrh, and frankincense, luxuries they certainly wouldn't have possessed on their own in the monastery in which which they resided.

This village had not been their first destination. They had only the star to guide them, but they knew nothing of the politics of these lands so far to the west or its geography. The star had heralded the birth of either a king of kings or an enlightened one, much like the potential paths which had been prophesied for their own lord and teacher five hundred years before. Only time would tell which path this child would follow. But one who would be a king of kings must certainly have been born in a royal family, and so they had traveled to the capital of this land, a city the local authorities called in their Greek language "Hierosolyma," and which the common people called in their own tongue, "Yerushalayim."

It was a strangely governed land. It had its own king, but the men in yellow observed that he did not appear to have nearly as much authority as the soldiers in red tunics and armor. They learned from inquiring that the land was truly governed by the emperor of a city even farther into the setting sun than this land was. That city's name was Rome, and it was spoken of with fear and loathing by this land's inhabitants.

They had paid their respects to the king of this land, a man called Herod, and explained why they were there, to honor the birth of his new son, the future "King of the Judeans." That had not gone as planned. There was no newly born prince in his household, and he at first appeared upset at the prospect that one might have been born without his knowledge. Then, a strange thing had occurred, he came back to them with another place, a village not far from his own palace where a prince of the Judean royal family was prophesied to be born. He sent them to find this prince with his blessing, and the instructions to return and inform him of where the child might be found so that he too might pay him homage. The village was only six miles away. That had been yesterday.

The village's name was, in the local tongue, "House of Bread," which name the six men, disciples of the Enlightened One Siddhartha, found humorous and profound all at the same time. The Greek speaking people called it "Bethle'em." It wasn't a large village by any means, and most of the inhabitants seemed in as much poverty as the men themselves, though, unlike the six disciples, the poverty of the people was not voluntary by any means. It was not difficult to discern that the Romans and King Herod had much to do with this.

The house had a wall around it, though the gate which led within was open. They could hear the hammering and sawing sounds of a carpenter's tools being used from within as they passed through the open door to speak to the people who resided within. They came upon a man whose facial features, beard, and long linen tunic covered over by a long outer coat marked him as very much a native of this land. His beard and hair had turned white and silver a long time ago, and his face was marked with the wrinkles of a long, hard life of both laughter and deep pain. Around his neck and shoulders he wore a long piece of cloth with what they presumed were markings and tassels on the ends. On his forehead, he wore a band of cloth with a small box that didn't seem to be impeding his eyesight as he skillfully and artfully took off the most minute pieces of wood as only a master artist could.

The six men stood before him patient and serene, politely waiting for him to finish his project, what looked like a wooden table, and acknowledge their presence. It took great focus for a man to work a piece of wood in this way, and it became a constructive meditation for them.

"Shalom," the old man man finally said in the local tongue as he set his tools down and smiled broadly, though his eyes held a certain sadness in them which they could not understand just then.

The men smiled in return, and then responded in Greek, "Peace to you and to your house, lord," bowing at the waist and pressing his hands together as he did so.

"I am lord of very little." The man responded in jest. "But what I do have I am willing to share, friends. What can I do for you?"

The monk who had been selected as the leader, a man who had been following the Dharma for many, many years and was approaching the venerable age this Judean carpenter had reached, responded, "We have come far from the east, lord, in search of a newly born prince, the future king of this land." He explained. "We have traveled for two years looking for one who would be a king of kings, or an enlightened one. Finally, the star we have followed led us to this house."

The man's expression became more somber as he said, "Any new born 'king of the Jews' would be in Herod's palace in Yerushalayim. Here there is only myself, my..." he paused for a minute before continuing, "my wife, Mariam, and her son, Yeshua."

Their leader continued, "We went first to Hierosolyma, lord, but there was no new prince born to King Herod. He consulted with some priests of your people, and they suggested we come here, to Bethle'em. The star led us to this house."

"I don't know why it would have, friend." The old man replied, rubbing his heavily calloused hands together. "If you had come a thousand years ago, then perhaps a son of mine might have sat on the throne, but now he is more likely to become a carpenter like myself."

"This is very confusing." The leader said, and his brother monks agreed. "We were led to look for a boy who was born of a royal lineage."

"Well, both my wife and I are descendants of the ancient royal line of King David, but there hasn't been a descendant of David on the throne of Judea for almost five hundred years. I can't say any child of either of us would have much chance of reigning now."

The monk considered that. It was different than what they had expected, but then nothing about this journey was what they had expected. "May we see your son, lord?"

The man paused again, a look of tired pain crossing his otherwise friendly features. "I don't suppose it would hurt anything." He responded after a minute. The lead monk thought he might say something else in response, but the old man held his tongue."He's a good boy that one." The man finally said, and then he called out "Mariam! We have guests! Bring the boy! They want to meet him!"

The old man then turned back to them and said, "I am Yosef Bar-Ya'akov, my friends."

"We are disciples of the Enlightened One Siddartha and his teaching, the Dharma from the Monastery of Nagarahara. My name is Anandas. I am honored to be the abbot of our monastery." The leader responded to him.

Soon, a young woman, no more than fifteen or sixteen years old came out of the dwelling and into the small courtyard and workspace of the old carpenter. She had the long dark hair of her people, though it was mostly covered by the head coverings common among the women of this land. Her eyes were also careworn, and there was a burden in them that seemed far too heavy for one of her age to have to carry so soon. By her side, and holding her hand was a small boy, two years of age, with chestnut brown hair and a ruddy complexion. His eyes were bright and intelligent as he observed the world around him, and he had a smile of peace on his face as he toddled next to his mother.

Immediately, Anandas could see that there was something very different about this child as the young woman came up to stand beside her "husband." Anandas could also not fail to notice the extreme difference in ages between the old man and his "wife," although such a difference was not unheard of even among his own people. "We are honored to meet you and your son, lady." Anandas told her, bowing deeply again, and this time the other monks bowed deeply as well.

"Thank you." She responded graciously, if uncertainly, looking at the strange foreign men.

"As I have explained to your husband, we have traveled from a kingdom very far to the east to find and honor the newborn king of the Judeans. A new star in the heavens led us here, to this house after we could not find the new prince in the palace of King Herod. If it pleases you, we would like to offer one of three gifts for your son to choose from." He told her. He then called for his brother monks to bring the gifts they had brought, a bag of gold, a box of frankincense, and another box containing myrrh.

Anandas took the gifts in his hands, and then carefully sat down cross legged on the ground, to be on the level of the boy, meeting him eye to eye. There was something about the look in his eyes, Anandas noticed. Even at this early age he could see the depth of compassion behind them. Surely he would be the one? He opened the boxes and placed them both in front of him. Then he opened the bag of gold and spilled the many gold coins out of it into a pile on the ground in front of him so that they shone and gleamed in the sunlight, a temptation for any toddler. The scents from the frankincense and the myrrh wafted up from the boxes and sent their perfumes around the monk.

"Strange gifts for a two year old, sir." Yosef observed, watching the whole thing.

Anandas smiled broadly and then motioned for the boy to come and choose just one gift. Mariam let go the hand of her son and he toddler over and sat on the ground in front of the funny man in the yellow robes. The boy looked at each of the gifts intently, and then turned away from the gold to the fragrant frankincense and myrrh.

Anandas' heart began to race as he watched the boy deliberate. Then the boy reached out for the myrrh and took the box in his hands, placing it in his own lap thoughtfully, smiling as he did so. "For me," the boy said smiling.

Tears came to Anandas' eyes, and one escaped falling down his cheek. "Yes." He responded. "It is for you." He then whispered in adoration to the boy, "My Lord Metteya, we have found you at last." The yellow robed monk then repositioned himself onto his knees, and he pressed his face to the ground in homage to the boy. As he did so, his five other brother monks did the same, going down on their knees and pressing their own faces to the ground.

Neither Yosef nor Mariam knew what to make of the whole thing, and Yosef became very uncomfortable as then men silently continued on their knees, worshiping the bare naked babe who hadn't even been fully weaned yet.

Then Anandas straightened himself back up, but did not return to his feet. He couldn't speak for the great joy which had risen within him. The boy then pointed with his tiny finger up into the sky and said, "My abba."

At this, Yosef looked down at the ground, and Mariam made to scoop the boy up and carry him off, but Yosef motioned for her to stop. "It's alright Mariam."

Anandas was confused. "I do not understand. What does 'abba' mean?"

Mariam looked away and did not answer. Yosef looked up, the pain had returned to his eyes though he tried to smile as he said, "It means 'father' in our language."

"But he pointed to the sky, and not to you." Anandas said, still confused.

"Because I'm not the boy's father." Yosef told him, a weary sigh escaping his lips. "I'm sorry friend. It's not something we usually discuss with people openly."

"But the boy pointed to the sky when he said 'my father.'" Anandas said, now understanding the discomfort and pain which the man was experiencing, but he had to know all of it.

"That is a very long story." Yosef responded. "And it's not one my people would have accepted, so we have shared it with no one."

"Please, I do not mean to cause offense or pain to you. But it is very important to us. We must know how this boy was conceived. We will keep your secret if you wish and tell no one here, but it is very important."

"Alright." The man said after a moments deliberation. "Please, come inside and we will talk there." He then motioned for the men to follow him. Mariam picked up Yeshua who was still holding the box of myrrh he had chosen. The monks came and picked up the other gifts and brought them with them inside as well.

Yosef explained as he led them inside. "The religious practices of my people don't usually allow us to touch foreigners or have them come into our homes, but you men have traveled a long ways to see us, and our God commands us to show hospitality to the stranger and the foreigner. You may come into my home and stay for the night if you wish."

"We thank you kindly for your generous hospitality, lord." Anandas told him.

"Mariam, prepare a meal for our guests." Yosef told the young woman, and she obediently went to do so, Yeshua following along behind her. He then motioned for them to join him, reclining at the low sitting table. The other men followed suit. "I wanted to be out of the hearing of ears that do not need to hear the story. You must understand, some people would use what I am about to tell you to have myself and Mariam stoned to death, not to mention the boy."

"I understand." Anandas replied in all seriousness as he sought to understand more about the nature of the child they had found.

"I'm still not even sure I believe it myself." Yosef told them, "But when a messenger, an angel of the Most High God comes to you and tells you, well, you tend to take him at his word."

"I'm sorry, tells you what?" Anandas asked.

"Let me start at the beginning." Yosef said, and then continued. "Three years ago, I was selected by lot by the priests of the temple of our God in Yerushalayim to care for a virgin girl who had been dedicated to our God by her parents. They chose me to care for her because I had lost my wife, my first wife, several years before, and my children were already grown. She could not just come to live with me. Our laws and our culture forbid it. So I had to become betrothed to her so that she would be cared for by me and my sons as a member of our family, but because Mariam was a dedicated virgin there was never any question of consummating the marriage. Do you understand what I am saying?"

"Yes, very much so." Anandas replied, and he did. The customs of this people may be strange, but the logic was not hard to follow.

"Shortly after our betrothal, Mariam received a visit from a messenger of God who called himself Gabriel." Yosef paused in his story.

"Yes, go on." Anandas encouraged.

"The messenger told her that she would become pregnant as a virgin, and that the child she gave birth to would be the son of our God." Yosef said, visibly struggling, it seemed, to get the words out. "I didn't believe her at first, but to openly accuse her of breaking her vows to both God and myself would have gotten her killed, and I didn't want that to happen, so I tried to find a quiet way to send her away and set her free. That's when the same messenger visited me in a dream, told me what happened, and told me to go ahead with the wedding. He also told me to name the boy 'Yeshua.'"

Anandas and his brother monks carefully digested this new information. It was more than they had expected and looked for. Could it really be? "Please, tell me, what does this name mean? Yeshua?" He asked.

"It's a common name, but it means 'savior' in our language." Yosef told him. He then said, "Now let me ask you a question. You called the boy 'Metteya'. What does that mean?"

"It is from the language of our lord and teacher, the Enlightened One, Siddhartha. It means 'lovingkindness.'" Another of the monks spoke up.

"Before he died five hundred years ago," Anandas explained, "our lord and master gave a prophecy to his first disciples. He spoke of another Enlightened One who was to come who would teach a glorious religion of peace and lovingkindness to all men. He called the name of that teacher to come 'Metteya.' We have been looking for him for a very long time."

Yosef seemed to take this information in thoughtfully. "And what about the 'gifts' you offered to the boy. Myrrh is a strange gift for a two year old. Our people use it for embalming the dead among other things."

Anandas smiled and explained, "The gifts were a test. Gold is a gift for a king, and shows an inclination towards material things. If he had chosen the gold, we would have known he was not the one we sought, for an Enlightened One would not distinguish between a pile of gold and a pile of rocks."

Yosef nodded thoughtfully, and then said, "I know frankincense is used by the priests for their sacred oils in the temple."

"Indeed." Anandas responded. "It would have signified perhaps the path of a temple priest."

"So what was the significance of the myrrh?" The old man was curious.

"Myrrh is a powerful medicine among my people. It is used to heal a great many ailments and diseases. Yeshua has come as a great one who will bring healing and compassion to the world as our lord and master foretold." Anandas told him excitedly.

"I see." Yosef said. "And what happens now that you have found this 'Metteya?'"

"We would like for him to return with us, to learn the teachings of our lord Siddartha and through them to reach his full enlightenment to bring his compassion and lovingkindness to the world." Anandas told the old man.

"You would take the boy away from us? From his own people? From the worship and teachings of our God?" Yosef questioned. "I don't know if I'm crazy or not for believing who Yeshua's true father is, but I don't think he would be very happy about that, do you? If it is my responsibility to look after both his son, and the boy's mother for him then I can't let them go like that. Not now at least."

The monks looked at each other with a serious expression. Then Anandas turned to face Yosef again. "We understand. We certainly have no desire to offend the divine father of the boy, and we would never ask you to dishonor your duty to him where the boy and his mother are concerned, and we would never take the boy from his mother. We would invite you all to return with us to Ghandara. You would all be honored guests, and safe from all harm."

"I'm too old to make that kind of a journey if it's as far away as you say, and the boy is too young." Yosef returned. "I don't think either of us would survive it right now."

Anandas considered this as well, but did not know what to say. Had they traveled so far only to return home empty handed?

"Perhaps the boy could come to study at our monastery when he is older, and able to make the journey?" Another, younger monk offered.

"Perhaps." Anandas agreed. "Then it would be his decision to choose the path of enlightenment as his divine father might lead him, and not ours alone."

Yosef said nothing. By the time Yeshua was old enough to make such a journey, he reasoned, he would likely be married and settled down and then all of this would be forgotten anyways. To the men he said, "That's probably for the best then. We'll leave it for the future."

"And you will tell the boy of our visit, and our offer when he is old enough?" Anandas asked.

"I will. I promise." Yosef said, but in his heart he added, "if I live long enough."

Later that night, as Anandas lay in the courtyard of the dwelling, wrapped in his robes and some extra woolen cloaks which Yosef had lent to the monks against the chill of the winter night air, he had a strange dream.

"Anandas!" A muscular man with blond hair came to him. He wore a red tunic with dark black armor. Great black wings projected from the man's back. Anandas found himself standing on a cliff overlooking a great canyon in the desert as the man spoke to him. A golden glow of light surrounded the man. "Anandas!" He called to him again.

"I am here, lord!" Anandas replied, somewhat fearful of the apparition.

"Don't return to King Herod in Hierosolyma!" The winged man warned him. "Instead, go east from here. Follow the Yarden river road north to reach the trade routes."

"The King asked us to tell him where my newborn Lord was, lord. Should I not tell him?" Anandas asked.

"No!" The man replied. "Herod intends to kill the boy, and you and your monks. The Most High God has warned you. Don't return to Hierosolyma!"

"I understand, lord, and we will obey." Anandas replied.

"I myself will keep the king from discovering you Anandas. You have done well." The man said.

"Thank you, lord." Anandas replied. He then asked, "May I know if the boy will accept our offer? I do not think I will live to see what he chooses."

"You will live to see it, and you will be there to welcome him." The messenger reassured him.

"Is he the One, lord? This son of the God of the Judeans?" Anandas asked uncertanly. "Is he the Buddha Metteya which was to come?"

"He is so much more than that, Anandas!" The messenger smiled broadly. "For the Most High God walks among you now as one of you. He will save the world and break the cycle of suffering once and for all for everyone who accepts his Dharma!"

"The boy is an avatar, lord? He is a god made flesh?" Anandas was astonished, and couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"No, Anandas. He is 'the' Avatar. He is the God made flesh." The messenger responded. "You and your fellow monks have done well, and now your part is ended for now. Return home by way of the Yarden river road, and forget about returning to Hierosolyma."

Anandas bowed in respect and obedience to the messenger's command. "I obey the will of the Most High God, lord."

The next day the monks took their leave of Yosef and Mariam. Anandas had not been surprised to learn of a strange dream that Yosef himself had also had, and their sudden plans to move as far from Bethle'em as possible. Before they parted, he presented Yosef with the bag of gold and the box of frankincense saying, "Yeshua had no desire for these things, so we give them to you to use as you see fit. I think you will need them now for your journey far more than we will for ours."

The old man and his wife thanked them for the gifts profusely. "We will offer prayers to our God for you, friends." Yosef responded.

"As will I." Anandas replied, gazing at the boy Mariam was holding as he said it. He then pressed his hands together in front of him and closed his eyes inclining his head towards the boy. "We will meet again, my Lord and teacher. I am certain of it." He said, addressing the boy.

The little boy looked serenly at him, and then pointed to the sky and said, "my abba."

"Indeed." Anandas replied, smiling.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

25 years later...

The marketplace of Nagarahara was bustling as the two Greek women wandered through it, taking in all the strange wonders which could be found. One was as tall as most men, and had long dark hair spilling over a short armored tunic. Her eyes were quick and intelligent, but there was also a haunted look to them even as she attempted to enjoy herself watching the street magicians and snake charmers. A long, well used sword hung in its scabbard at her back, and a curious round disk shaped weapon hung at her side. Her companion could not have appeared more different as she was at least a head shorter and carried only a long wooden staff. She wore a simple green top which only came down to her midsection, and a short brown skirt. Her long hair was of a strawberry blond color, and her eyes were filled with light, laughter, and life as she bounced from sight to sight, pulling her friend with her.

"India is so different, isn't it Xena, and yet it feels so familiar!" The blond haired young woman told her companion. "It's so strange and exotic and mysterious, and yet there's this connection too!" She then pointed to a sight she had never seen before.

"Look!" She said to her companion. In front of them and off to their right was an older Indian man in traditional dress. He was walking barefoot over hot coals which were still smoking.

Her dark haired companion smiled as she held the younger woman's arm and said, "Maybe that's the Indians' traditional way of rolling out the red carpet, Gabrielle." It wasn't the first time Xena had seen a firewalker, but Gabrielle's sense of wonder and discovery was infectious and it made it feel like she was seeing it for the first time again too.

"Yeah, may be." Her friend responded with a laugh.

Gabrielle then pulled her taller friend over to another sight. This one was a man dressed in the white home spun which most of the people around them seemed clothed in. He was calmly sitting in front of a basket while playing a flute. Xena and Gabrielle watched with some fascination as a cobra, its hood spread wide slowly appeared out of the basket, it's head turned towards the fluteplayer. It did not strike at the man, as Gabrielle seemed afraid it might do, but instead the snake itself seemed transfixed by the music, swaying gently to the sounds. "Looks like the snake knows good music when it hears it." Xena quipped, and tossed a couple of small coins in the man's basket.

They moved on to another sight, a man who had a flaming sword in his hand. In front of him was seated another man, his head tilted up, and his mouth wide open. To the astonishment of the two women, the first man plunged the sword down the seated man's throat, and then he withdrew it, and the seated man appeared to suffer no harm. They didn't know what to say to that.

The two moved on. Xena had to smile as Gabrielle seemed to have the need to see every vendor's stall and table. After all they had been through together, the warrior woman still had to remind herself of how young and inexperienced with the world Gabrielle still was. Xena had struggled to protect the younger woman from that world that she knew was cold and cruel for the last several years of their life together. It was becoming harder and harder the longer she remained with Xena, and it was one more thing which tore at the dark haired woman's soul. It was one of her greatest fears that Gabrielle would become like her someday.

Xena was then taken out of her brooding thoughts by the sounds of shouting. Down the street, angry voices were being raised and they were getting louder and angrier.

"Xena do you hear that?" Gabrielle asked her friend, concern filling her voice.

"Yeah, sounds like someone's not enjoying the marketplace today." Xena responded, her eyes taking on a focused, more hardened look. "Let's go see what happening."

The two moved quickly down the hard packed dirt street through the marketplace's crowds as best they could towards the sounds of the angry shouting. They reached the center of the marketplace where a younger man in travel stained yellow robes with dark, chestnut brown hair and beard was speaking to anyone who would hear him, and several of those who did tried to shout him down. Xena could tell at a glance that the man was not native to the area, but was from a region west of here she and Gabrielle had recently visited within the last few years.

"God the Father makes no difference between his children; all to him are equally precious." The young man was preaching. "Fear your God, bend the knee before him only, and bring to him alone the offerings which proceed from your profits. The Judge Eternal, the Eternal Spirit, comprehends the one and indivisible soul of the universe, which alone creates, contains, and makes everything alive He alone has willed and created, he alone has existed since all eternity, and his existence will have no end. He has no equal either in the heavens or on earth. The Great Creator has not shared his power with any living being, still less with inanimate objects, as they have taught to you," at this he pointed to a well dressed group of men, whose faces were twisting with rage, "for he alone possesses omnipotence. He willed it and the world appeared. In a divine thought, he gathered together the waters, separating from them the dry portion of the globe. He is the principle of the mysterious existence of man, in whom he has breathed a part of his Being. And he has subordinated to man the earth, the waters, the beasts, and all that he has created and that he himself preserves in immutable order, fixing for each thing the length of its duration. The anger of God will soon be let loose against men; for they have forgotten their Creator, they have filled their temples with abominations, and they worship a crowd of creations which God has made subordinate to them. Because, to do honor to stones and metals, they sacrifice other human beings, in whom dwell a part of the spirit of the Most High. These are such men as humiliate those who work by the sweat of their brow to acquire the favor of an idler seated at their sumptuous tables. Those who deprive their brethren of divine happiness shall be deprived of it themselves." The young preacher taught the crowd.

Xena's instincts told her she didn't have the time to appreciate the man's words as she looked carefully to the man's listeners. Most of them were dressed in the white homespun tunics and turbans which marked them as the poorer people of the city; farmers, servants, and common laborers. There were looks of approval and contemplation on their faces. No threat was to come from them that she could see.

"Blaspheming foreigner!" Xena's head turned in the direction of the enraged voice. "You seek to fill these Vaisya and Sudra heads with nonsense. Brahman himself has established the order of things by his creation of the four castes from his head, his arms, his thighs and his feet! The divine vedas teach us this!"

By his accoutrements and his weight, Xena could tell that the man was wealthy. She was about to quip that his god could keep his body parts to himself, but the young preacher continued before she could say anything.

"The Vedas were written by men!" The preacher continued unperturbed, talking directly to the wealthy man and those companions which gathered around the man. "They were written by men to justify and continue the unjust subjugation of one people to another. I tell you this, the Brahmans and the Kshatriyas shall become the Sudras, and with the Sudras the Eternal shall dwell for eternity. Because in the day of the last judgment the Sudras and the Vaisyas will be forgiven much because of their ignorance, while God, on the contrary, will punish with his wrath those who have arrogated to themselves his rights." He then turned back to the poorer people to teach them, "Don't worship the idols, because they can't hear you! Don't listen to the Vedas, because their truth is counterfeit. Never put yourself in the first place and never humiliate your neighbor. Help the poor, support the weak, do harm to no one, and don't covet what you don't have or what you see belongs to another. This is what pleases the Eternal Spirit who has no favorites and judges all equally regardless of caste."

Then the wealthy man's four companions drew sharp, sickle shaped swords. "That is enough of your heresy, Issa! Seize him! Don't let him live!" The wealthy man cried in a panic. He too was looking at all the faces of the poorer castes hanging on the yellow robed preacher's every word.

The next thing anyone heard was the whistling, humming sound of a metal disk flying through the air as the blades of the swords which the four men had drawn were cut in half. The object which had done it ricocheted off a nearby wall and returned to the hand of the warrior woman who had thrown it. Those men and women in the crowd who had been standing near the Greek woman began to back away from around her and her friend as she called out, "I don't think so! The man has a right to say what he wants! If your gods are so right and powerful, they can can take it up with him themselves."

"Who are you to interfere in our affairs, woman?" The wealthy man challenged her.

"Just a girl who loves a good sermon. Let the man finish what he has to say." Xena replied, an edge to her voice to match the deadly hardness in her eyes. She then turned her head to signal the man to continue his preaching, but when she looked, he was nowhere to be found.

"Where did he go?" Gabrielle asked in confusion as the crowd also began to look around among each other and asking the same question.

"I don't know." Xena responded thoughtfully. "But I can't fault him for getting out while the others were distracted." She looked around at the crowds who were giving the wealthy man and his companions evil stares as they dispersed and walked away. "Better that than the riot which could have erupted." She said as she placed the disk weapon back on its hook attached to her waist.

After the preacher disappeared, the wealthy man gave orders to his men to find him, and, giving Xena one more dirty look, he then moved off as well. But Xena didn't feel like she could relax just yet. She scanned the side streets nearby.

"So what do we do now?" Gabrielle asked.

"We try and follow the preacher." Xena said as she continued to look around her, listening to all the sounds of the marketplace. What she was listening for wouldn't be easy to hear with all the commotion around them. It would in fact be nearly impossible to anyone not accustomed to tuning everything else out in a crowded noisy venue like this. But she heard it, and turned in the direction of the sound.

"Why?" Gabrielle asked.

"Because if I'm not mistaken, this is just getting started." The warrior woman responded. "Quiet footfalls, this way." She said, and headed off down a nearby alleyway.

He knew that the old monk would not be here. Not now. It had been eleven years and the man was old and frail when the young Judean man had first met him. Still, he thought, he owed the man this much and perhaps more as he returned to the old monastery he had first resided in upon coming to this land. He walked the old stone path up to the door of the ancient stone and brick structure and, taking a small hammer, hit the bell to announce his presence to those within.

It wasn't unlike that first time, he remembered. He had only been fourteen, almost fifteen years of age when the ancient yellow robed abbot opened the door to find him standing there. "I greet you, Buddha to be." The old man had said, bowing to the youth whom he had presumed he had just met.

The young man had responded in the way which seemed appropriate for him, and he sensed his father's pleasure in his response, "And I greet you, faithful servant of my father."

The old man had smiled, but with confusion in his eyes, "And who is your father that I might have served him so well?" He responded.

The young man had thought for some time during his journey as to how to explain who he was, and why he was there. In preparation for this moment, he had brought with him an old cedar box which still smelled of the fragrant myrrh which had once graced it. He produced this box from within his traveling clothes and placed it into the old man's hands. He then pointed to the heavens and said in Greek, "My abba."

The young preacher smiled as he remembered the face of the old man light up with recognition, "Yeshua?" He had asked, though he had trouble pronouncing the name given to him so long ago and said something like "Issa?" The young man never bothered to correct him. It wasn't important. "Issa" was certainly good enough here.

Tears had come to the old man's eyes when Yeshua confirmed who he was. "My Lord," he wept. "You have come to us at last." He told him through an aging voice, cracking from emotion. The old man reached out to embrace the younger as though he were a long lost grandson, and Yeshua had returned the embrace warmly. He could feel the frailty of the old man's limbs as they held him. "I had almost given up hope." The old monk had said then.

"Yosef told me of your offer to come and study with you, I have spent almost the last two years along the trade routes trying to find you." Yeshua told him as the old man let go from his embrace.

"Come inside!" The old man had taken him by the hand and led him into the structure to a dining room where the monks took their meals, and an old, but solid wooden table and bench where he invited the young man to sit. "How are your parents?" He asked him.

"The last time I saw them, Yosef and my mother were well; at least, they were as well as could be expected. Yosef wasn't a young man when I was born. My stepbrothers have taken to caring for him and my mother." Yeshua responded.

"And why have you come to us now?" The abbot had asked him.

Yeshua took a moment to collect his thoughts as to how much to say. "Yosef and my mother wanted me to study in Jerusalem and become a rabbi. In their eyes that is the most natural path for me to take. But in order for me to follow that path among my own people, I must be married and there was talk of arranging a marriage with a cousin of mine. My father wanted me to follow a different path. There are things he wants me to learn and to experience that I can't among my own people. The path he wants for me to walk..." He tried to find a way to explain what he knew to be true. "I must walk that path alone. I could not remain among my own people and follow the wishes of my father."

The old man listened intently and with compassion and non-judgment in his eyes. "I cannot say that I understand. I do not know that there is any other man on earth who could." He said. "But you are certainly most welcome here, my Lord. How may I serve you?"

"Teach me, friend." Yeshua had responded with humility. "Teach me what my father believes my people cannot."

That had begun his life in this monastery eleven years ago. He had not stayed more than two years, but in those two years the abbot had taught him methods and concepts which he just knew to be truth, but which his fellow Judeans wouldn't understand. But there was a peace that he had found in this place, a communion with his father which became deeper and more tangible through the old abbot's instruction in contemplation and meditation and for which he was thankful.

The creak of the wooden door opening pulled him back to the present. Another man whom Yeshua recognized had opened it. He had also been a student of the abbot eleven years ago. "Issa?" The man asked, recognizing him.

Yeshua nodded. "I greet you, a Buddha to be." He said in the greeting which was traditional for the monks. The man smiled and returned the greeting, and then added, "I see your father has brought you back to us. Will you stay?"

"I can't." He told the man. "I'm only passing through on my way back to my own people. My father is drawing me back home. I wanted to pay my respects to the abbot before I went."

The monk's face fell slightly. "I am sorry Issa. Abbot Anandas is no longer with us. He left us two winters ago. I would have sent you word, but we did not know to where you had traveled."

Yeshua had already expected as much. He could not have lasted much longer in his mortal body. Still, the news didn't come without emotion as his eyes watered. "Will you show me where you have lain him?"

The man nodded and said, "Come my brother." He motioned for Yeshua to follow him as he stepped out of the doorway and closed the door behind him. He led him along a pack dirt path around the main building of the monastery and up behind it to their burial ground. A series of small caves and simple tombs which were cut as they were needed. The man stopped in front of the mouth of a tomb where a rough hewn granite slab had been placed in front of it.

"Abbot Anandas sleeps here, Issa. I will leave you with him." The monk said respectfully then turned to leave. But before he did, he remarked, "The abbot loved you very much."

"And I him." Yeshua responded. The sight of the tomb moved him deeply, and a single tear fell from his eyes.

The monk nodded, "As did we all." He agreed, and then took his leave.

"Father," Yeshua closed his eyes and spoke quietly and reverently out loud, addressing the one person in his life whom he knew would never leave him. "Keep the soul of this your faithful servant who answered your call to come and find me. Keep him in paradise for the time being until your plan is fulfilled and we can receive him into better habitations." He opened his eyes and then addressed the tomb, "Sleep well old friend. You have earned your rest."

"Friend of yours?" Came a woman's voice from behind him.

Yeshua recognized it as the woman who had spoken up in his defense earlier. "Yes. He was a dear friend of mine." He said as he turned to face the Greek woman who had somehow been able to follow him here. "I just stopped by to pay my respects before I moved on. I'm sorry I didn't stop to thank you earlier for speaking up in my defense." He told her. "But it seemed more practical at the time to remove myself from the situation before it became uglier than it was. I didn't want anyone getting hurt."

The woman and her companion smiled at that. "It was probably the right thing at the time." She agreed. "It seemed like you had a talent for provoking a strong response from people."

Yeshua smiled and chuckled at that. "I suppose you could say that. The people here call me 'Issa.'"

"I'm called Xena, my friend's name is Gabrielle." The dark haired Greek woman told him as the shorter blond woman waved and smiled. "It seemed like some of your audience didn't like what you had to say. Do you get that a lot?"

"Many don't." Yeshua responded. "It doesn't make it less true, only less popular. In this case the priestly caste and the ruling castes of this land enjoy their special privileges at the expense of men and women who are no less worthy of the Eternal Creator's love and attention than they are. They preach and serve gods who aren't worthy even of the name 'gods' and bully the people beneath them into doing the same." He moved away from the tomb and came farther down on the path towards them.

The Greek women gave each other knowing smiles in front of him before the warrior woman responded, "Yeah, we have some experience with those kinds of 'gods' too."

"Who is this Eternal Creator you talked about?" The blond woman asked quite honestly. It was refreshing to him. "Do you mean Zeus, or one of the gods of India?"

"No." He said with a half smile. "Zeus, Hera, Ares...Indra, Agni these are powerful spiritual beings, but they are not gods. Not like him." He responded. "Not like my father."

"Your father?" Gabrielle asked uncertainly. "Your father's a god?"

"So, you're a demi-god like Hercules then?" Xena asked, and Yeshua could tell she immediately tensed.

How did he explain it? He himself wasn't even certain. "Not exactly. The truth is, I'm not entirely sure how to explain it myself. The human mind, any human mind, can only comprehend so much." He left it at that, and returned to the other question they had asked, the one that was more comfortable for him to talk about. "My father created the beings you know as gods a long time ago and set them as authorities, ruling different aspects of his creation. But, as much as they wish to deny it, they are also creations that had a beginning. And like everything that has a beginning, they will also be brought to an end in time. It was never intended that mankind look to them for guidance or worship."

The two women seemed to be processing his words, trying to understand him. The dark haired one, Xena, said nothing in response, but looked at him with some new respect. He could tell behind her eyes that she could feel the truth behind his words, and had come to some of the same conclusions herself already.

"You said you were moving on from here. Where are you going? We don't have anywhere we need to be right now. Maybe we could travel together." Gabrielle asked.

Yeshua smiled but said, "I appreciate the offer, but I don't know if that would work. I'm traveling west to Judea from here. I move out with a caravan along the trade routes tomorrow."

"I don't think you want to be going back into town in the next few days to meet up with the caravans. People like the men who accosted you today don't give up that easily, not when you're preaching against a system that keeps them comfortable." Xena told him, and he knew she was right. He had considered the same wisdom himself but couldn't foresee another option.

"Judea's a long ways away." Gabrielle observed. "We passed through there on our way here. What takes you there?"

"It's where I'm from. It's been fourteen years since I've been back and I've learned everything I can here in the east. My father is drawing me home again." Yeshua responded.

"That takes almost a couple of years to travel overland from here. It would be faster to take a ship from the coastline in the south towards Aegyptus and then go overland from there." Gabrielle said. "That's what we did, although in reverse."

"Perhaps." Yeshua conceded. In truth, he hadn't thought about making the journey home by sea, though it made sense now that she said it. "Though it would still take many months." He reasoned.

"We aren't doing anything particularly important at the moment. Why don't we travel with you south to the port cities?" Xena offered again. "You can tell us more about this Eternal Creator of yours."

"You seem to believe it would be better for everyone if I traveled with an armed escort." Yeshua remarked, his eye on the weapons the woman wore openly. Inwardly he found their concern touching, but it wouldn't work, not with the message he knew he needed to bring to the world.

"Couldn't we just be three people who happen to be traveling in the same direction?" Gabrielle insisted.

. "Violence isn't the path my father wants me to walk. In the ancient scriptures of my people, my father commanded the priests and judges of the people of old to not keep a standing army, or even a census of armed men because he wanted them to rely on him alone to defend and protect them. If I am to preach a path of non-violence, and non-retaliation, I have to be willing to practice it as well regardless of what it might cost me." Yeshua tried to explain to them.

"We can respect that, can't we Gabrielle?" Xena said, a little too quickly Yeshua noticed. His suspicions were further aroused by the brief question in the blond woman's eyes which was answered by a single look from Xena. There was a communication going on between them that he wasn't privy to, but which told him neither had any intention of leaving the matter there. So be it. They had their path to walk, and he had his.

"Yeah, of course we can." Gabrielle responded to Xena a split second later. "We just thought we'd offer."

"Of course." Yeshua said. "Thank you for you concern for my safety." And he meant it. "Where are you staying tonight?" He asked them.

"We were planning on staying in one of the inns in town." Xena said. "And you?"

"My fellow monks here in the monastery keep an extra sleeping mat for visitors." Yeshua responded as he began the descent back down towards the structure, walking past the two women. "Regretfully, they don't usually allow women to stay overnight. It becomes too great of a temptation in thought if not in action to the monks who have made professions of chastity."

"We'll be fine." Xena said, though he could see wheels within wheels turning in her mind. No, she certainly had no intention of letting him travel alone he could tell. This was a woman who was driven to protect people she believed couldn't protect themselves. He could respect and appreciate that. It was something which was close to his father's heart too.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Ares was angry. That, in and of itself, shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. Ares was usually angry with someone or something. Anger was what he lived for and thrived on. The anger of mortals in particular was like an intoxicant to him, a sweet aphrodisiac or soothing balm to his immortal existence.

His physical form had materialized briefly in a city much farther from his usual haunts than normal, but that was what he got for trying to pursue the one mortal woman he could never get out of his mind. She could never stay in one place for more than a devilishly short time. Her name meant "foreign woman," and it seemed like she was determined to make sure she was always somewhere where it applied.

But it wasn't the appearance of Xena here, thousands of miles away from Greece that had made Ares angry, though it did irritate him a little. It wasn't even Xena at all this time as he kept his eyes pointed towards the large, ornate structure up on the hill just outside of the city. That religious philosophy of the "enlightened" Hindu prince was already a serious pain in his backside, but now there was a new preacher who intended to come farther west with it, and there was something about this one that he couldn't quite place his divine finger on.

He walked unseen through the marketplace street at night. As he passed by unnoticed by those who had ventured out at night, arguments among the mortals began, some of which turned into fistfights or worse. But even these weren't enough to improve his mood.

He had been following Xena incognito as she crossed over into India (seriously, couldn't she have chosen a closer spot for their travels?), and was just about to enjoy the slaughter of one of those yellow robed peace lovers in the city when she had stopped it. That was just like her too, always trying to ruin his good times. Ares really missed the old Xena. She would have been the one to run the fool through, not the one cutting perfectly good swords in half with her Chakram.

He had considered just striking down the man himself, or rousing more of the crowd to do it for him for sport. Then he had caught a glimpse into the man's eyes and stopped dead in his tracks. The man was mortal, completely mortal, he was certain of it. But looking into his eyes was like looking beyond the vast universe into something he couldn't abide or fathom. There was an infinite... love there, and not like his sister's either. He didn't understand who or what the man was, and that made him... angry.

He glared with hatred at the monastery, wanting to rain down fire upon it and be done with them, but he found he couldn't bring himself to do it. He didn't know why, and that made him even angrier. Not even his own father could physically restrain him without a fight (his father always won those fights, but he didn't like to think about that).

He turned away from the abomination in front of him and headed for the inn where he knew Xena and the annoying blond she traveled with were staying. He also knew they weren't asleep yet. Xena probably wouldn't be asleep all night, not with the kind of peace preaching weakling in distress she usually hung out with nearby.

There was a tavern in the inn as he transferred himself to the open room. It lifted his spirits a little. Where there was a tavern, there was always some loser who drank too much. And where there was a drunk, there was always the potential for starting a good fight. If the Fates were kind to him tonight, he'd be able to get the whole tavern into full out brawl.

The room was filled with different customers dressed in all sorts of exotic costumes and guests with drinks, and the air was filled with the smoke from those weird smoking things the locals in this part of the world called 'hookahs.' Some of the smoke wafted over to him and it made him lightheaded and gave him strange sensations. "Whoa." He exclaimed, though no mortal ears could hear him. "What a buzz."

He stood in a dark corner of the inn and waited invisibly for a prime customer. Then he saw the face of the woman that stirred feelings in him like no other woman, goddess or mortal could (of course most of the immortal ones were related to him in some way and that was just weird, even for him). She was sitting opposite him across the room just watching and listening to the rest of the customers, a lot like himself in fact. She was so still and focused, she might as well have even been as invisible as he was. She had been his best student, and it did his heart good to see she hadn't lost any of the lessons he had taught her.

As he watched her watching the other customers in the room, he felt the negative energy begin to build, and it refreshed him as he listened to the conversation which became more and more heated. His presence might have had something to do with it, but hey, he had that effect on people, he thought to himself as he smiled at the thought.

"I tell you, Beltoon, that we must put an end to this man before his poison spreads to the rest of the Vaisyas and Sudras." Ares recognized the fat bearded man from the marketplace earlier, the one who would have had his men dealt with the yellow robed loudmouth and been done with it if Xena hadn't have interfered.

"He is a holy man, a monk, Barialay. And you have heard the stories about him, about what he can do. They say he can cast out demons and heal sick people. I don't..." The fat man's thinner friend, a coward if you asked Ares, didn't finish his sentence before his increasingly inebriated friend interrupted.

"He is no holy man!" The fat man, Barialay, shouted. "He blasphemes Vishnu himself, not to mention the other gods!" The man practically snarled. "What holy man upsets the natural order of things and then says the Brahmans will be judged more harshly than the Sudras?" He started laughing at the absurdity of it. "I will lose no sleep over the death of this foreign charlatan."

"What do you intend to do? The monks of the monastery are highly respected and revered in this city. You cannot harm one of them without bringing the city, and the king for that matter, down on you." Beltoon pointed out.

"Ah, come on, take a chance why don't you?" Ares said, crossing his arms over his chest in amazement.

"We do not have to do it in town, especially not with that foreign woman who confronted us this morning interfering." Barialay responded. "I have heard he intends to follow with the trade caravan tomorrow morning. Many things happen on the road west." He said menacingly. "My men are already in place."

Well, the man wasn't totally worthless after all, Ares thought to himself. He might prove useful even. He turned his attention back towards Xena, but she was nowhere to be seen. Of course she was, Ares thought. That's why he just couldn't get over her and move on.

Yeshua sat that night on the sleeping mat in the visitors sleeping chamber comfortably cross legged with his back erect. His hands were placed comfortably on his knees as he let go of all else around and focused on one thing only; the love of his father.

His teacher, the former abbot to whom he had paid his respects earlier in the day had taught him to focus on his breathing, but his father's presence was much more real, persistent, and tangible to him. In the silence of his cell, the sense of his father's presence could surround and envelope him, and drown out all other things. It was comforting and warm and surrounded him always. He had known it from the time he was a small child, and had never known a time without it, but the abbot's lessons had helped him to focus in on it in a way that he hadn't been able to before.

Time seemed to have no meaning for him when he sat like this. He spoke few words if any. He really didn't need to speak words with his father. He always seemed to be of the same mind as he was, and their communion was most often as though there was only a single mind at work, timeless and without separation.

Then he could hear the breathing of another person in the room, and he allowed his awareness to expand again to include the rest of his surroundings. "Oh, hello Darius." He said to the man who had taken a seat crosslegged opposite him, waiting patiently for his presence to be acknowledged.

"I hoped to find you still awake. I apologize for interrupting your meditation, but you are leaving tomorrow, and I fear we will not have a chance to talk again. You have been gone a long time, my friend." Darius said to him. "I heard you traveled farther east to the holy cities."

"I did. I spent time in Juggernaut, Rajagriha, Benares, and the others. I finally came to the country of Gautamides and spent six years there mastering the language of Siddharta, and the writings of his followers." Yeshua responded.

"You were in the great Himalayas?" Darius asked with some excitement. "I wish I could have gone with you. To see the land of the Buddha, and to study his words in his own language, that would have been a great honor."

"It was a great honor." Yeshua replied carefully. "And I am thankful for the kindness of his disciples there."

"You speak as though you no longer follow his Dharma, Issa." Darius questioned. "Are you not also still his disciple as I am?"

How was he to explain the decisions he had made, and the conclusions he had come to? Was Darius ready to accept them? Anandas would have understood, he was certain, but Anandas seemed at times to understand more about him than he did. He wished he had shared more of his insights with him before he had been made to move on by his father. But perhaps that was the point, perhaps he had to discover those truths about himself on his own. Perhaps Anandas knew that all along.

"The Enlightened Siddharta began the Dharma, but I see now that I must be the one to fulfill it." Yeshua finally said. "The cycle of karma and the suffering caused by it must be brought to an end."

"Each person must reach Nirvana through his own efforts, through the realization of the illusion of self. This cannot happen without many lifetimes of death and rebirth." Darius repeated for him.

"One must be born, and then one must be reborn into this mortal life again, and again, and again endlessly. What happens to all those who stumble along the way? Their suffering does not end as they burn for eternity with the suffering caused by their own thirst for self and existence. But what if one were to be born again just once? What if they were to be born again into an eternal, immortal existence where they could not die again?"

"There is no such existence for created beings, Issa." Darius observed. "All created beings, even gods and demons, must eventually die and be reborn according to their karma."

And here was the crux of his thought, "What if the life they were reborn into was not that of a created being? What if their existence was joined, or made one with the uncreated?"

Darius chewed on that for a minute, "You are thinking of your father, aren't you?" He finally said.

"Yes. I sense... I feel that he wants this. It pains him greatly to watch us live and die in pain and suffering, only to suffer again and again without end. Even those who attempt to live the Dharma with all they have fall short in the end, and fail to escape the fruit of their own karma. And so mankind suffers for all of its actions." Yeshua tried to explain it as best as he could.

"But how would a mortal man be joined to the eternal life of your father, Issa? As you have tried to explain him to me before, he is so very different from even other gods, much less mortal men." Darius' voice betrayed his confusion.

It was a question which had occupied Yeshua for years, but he thought he was close to the answer. "I think this is why I was born, Darius; to be the bridge between mankind and my father."

"How?" Darius asked.

Yeshua collected his thoughts on the subject, "Do you know Darius, my people don't believe in the cycle of death and rebirth? When a person dies his soul descends into the underworld into either a realm of paradise, or a realm of torment depending on the karma he has acquired during his life. But my people also believe that on the last day there will be a great judgment of all men who have ever lived, and then all men will have their original bodies restored to them, and they will be judged by my father."

"Your people's beliefs are strange, and hard to reconcile, my friend." Darius responded.

"Perhaps," Yeshua conceded. "But what if a person were to be resurrected into an immortal body, never to die again? Then the cycle of death and rebirth would be broken, wouldn't it?"

"I suppose." Darius said, trying to follow his friend's logic. "But I have never seen a person rise from the dead, nor have I ever heard of such a thing, much less become immortal in his own body after death. How could such a thing happen? I have seen you ask your father for several things which I would not have thought possible, and he granted them. I suppose I should not so readily doubt what might be possible for the son of so powerful a god as yours." He smiled, and Yeshua was grateful for his friend's attempt at understanding him and accepting him. There were very few human beings on earth to whom he could open up like this, one less since Anandas' death, but his friend Darius was one of them.

Should I tell him further? Yeshua debated within himself. It was a difficult thing for him to understand and accept. It was not a concept which his people would, or could accept, but the voice of his father within him told him it was the truth.

"There is something more I should tell you about this, my friend. Something I learned about myself while I was studying in Rajaputra." Yeshua began.

"Yes?" Darius asked patiently.

"I was reading the sacred texts of the Vedas. I came to understand about them that they were not written by gods, but by men." Yeshua tried to explain.

"As our Lord Buddha has told us." Darius agreed.

"Yes, Siddhartha was right about that. But there were things in them that awakened a realization within me about who I am; about what I am." Yeshua told him.

"You are a Devi, a healing deity made flesh, Issa. This is not new information to me. I have know.n that for a long time." Darius told him.

"I was reading the words of the Bhagavad Gita, and there was something which stirred within me like a long forgotten memory. In it Krishna said, 'Neither the professors of divinity nor the great ascetics know My origin, for I am the source of them all. He who knows Me as the unborn, without beginning, the Lord of the universe, he, stripped of his delusion, becomes free from all conceivable sin. Intelligence, wisdom, non-illusion, forgiveness, truth, self-control, calmness, pleasure, pain, birth, death, fear and fearlessness; Harmlessness, equanimity, contentment, austerity, beneficence, fame and failure, all these, the characteristics of beings, spring from Me only.'" Yeshua continued quoting the words he recalled with perfect clarity, "'He who rightly understands My manifested glory and My Creative Power, beyond doubt attains perfect peace. I am the source of all; from Me everything flows. Therefore the wise worship Me with unchanging devotion. With minds concentrated on Me, with lives absorbed in Me, and enlightening each other, they ever feel content and happy. To those who are always devout and who worship Me with love, I give the power of discrimination, which leads them to Me. By My grace, I live in their hearts; and I dispel the darkness of ignorance by the shining light of wisdom.' I said those words Darius. At some time in the ancient past, before I was born, I spoke those very words. Do you know who I was, Darius? Do you know who I am?"

Darius gazed into his friend's eyes with compassion, trying to understand what he was saying. "In a past life you were Krishna?" He turned the thought around in his mind. "If it were anyone else making that claim, Issa I would believe them self-deluded and insane. But I have known you, my brother, too well to believe you capable of such delusions of grandeur. You have always been the most humble of us here." He said, placing a reassuring hand on Yeshua's shoulder.

"Thank you my friend, but I am more than than just Krishna." Yeshua told him. How do I explain it? He asked himself. "I don't fully understand how it works, or where one begins and the other ends."

"What are you trying to say, my friend?" Darius asked, concerned for his friend.

"My father and I... I can sense the presence of my father around me constantly, and I know he is a different person from me, and yet I also know now that I am his Avatar, his incarnation as well. We are two, and yet we are also a single Being, a single Existence."

"You and your father are a single Being?" Darius asked. "I cannot profess to know or understand the ways of the Devas, and so I will not even try and comprehend what that might mean. To me, you will always be my friend and brother, Issa."

"It frightens me, my brother." Yeshua admitted to him. "Sometimes I can see glimpses of the path which lies ahead of me, and I don't know if I can walk it."

"Whatever destiny your father has for you," Darius began, "I know it will be great and you will be a great teacher for us all. You must walk in the path your father has set out for you in the same way each of us must walk the paths given to each of us. I only ask that if you do find a way to break the cycle, that you remember us here. Death comes for us all, and with it the consequences of karma."

"Thank you for your faith my friend. It means a great deal to me." Yeshua told him. Then he added, "I will find a way to wipe away karma. I believe this is my father's wish for me. This is why my father brought me into this world." He told him, more certain of it than he had ever been.

"No created being can answer for another's karma, Issa. This was the teaching of Lord Buddha." Darius responded.

"And I know now that this is why I have come." Yeshua answered. "To change everything."

Xena had awakened Gabrielle in their room at the inn, and the two traveled back up the road to the monastery. It was late at night, and the stars shone brightly in the clear, moonless sky. Under other circumstances, she might not have even bothered the Buddhist monk with this, and just "persuaded" the scumbags laying in wait for him on the road herself. But he made his wishes on the subject very clear, and whether she agreed with his way or not, she would respect it. But that didn't mean he had to walk straight into their trap blind. There were other solutions to be had, unfortunately the simplest one involved a distinct lack of sleep tonight, but such was life.

"Are you certain about this, Xena?" Gabrielle asked her friend. "He seemed pretty clear that he didn't want our help."

"No, I'm not. I'd rather just take out the trash and be done with it. But at least this way we can tell him with a certainty that we know someone's going to try and harm him tomorrow morning. Then he can make up his own mind what he wants to do about it." Xena replied. The truth was, she didn't know why she was doing this either. She respected the man's position of non-violence, and if he really didn't want her help, she wasn't going to force him. That wasn't her way any more."

"What do you think about what he was preaching?" Gabrielle asked, changing the subject.

"That all men are equal? I've been on too many battlefields to disagree. All men bleed and die pretty much the same." Xena answered without much deliberation. "I've seen good and noble men owned like cattle, and treated worse by scum that crawled out from under a rock dressed in fancy clothes and wearing gold chains. It's not some divine order that put either man in that position, that's for sure."

"Yeah, I have too." Gabrielle agreed. "What do you think about what he said about there only being one god worth worshiping?"

"When I've found a god worth worshiping I'll let you know, Gabrielle. I'm still trying to deal with the ones that aren't." Xena quipped.

Her petite blond companion smiled and laughed knowingly. "Tell me about it." She said.

They came up to the monastery door and, not knowing what else to do, Xena pounded on the front door with the hilt of her sword, having drawn it from the scabbard on her back. "Issa!" She called out, aware that it was the middle of the night but knowing it couldn't wait until morning. "We need to speak with you!"

After a few minutes, she could hear the sound of bare feet approaching the doorway. It was a sound that most people wouldn't be able to discern, but the years of honing her senses to give herself the best advantage in a fight possible had picked up on it clearly and distinctly. A hand touched the door and it opened inwards to reveal the bearded monk with the long hair tied back into a braided ponytail that they had met earlier in the day.

"My fellow monks were fortunate that the room I occupied tonight was nearest to the entrance." He remarked. Xena noticed that his eyes were still alert, and his breathing still regular. There was no yawn forthcoming from him.

"Barialay has goons set up to ambush you on the road tomorrow and make it look like an accident." She told him flatly, without greeting or pleasantries. "I heard it from his own lips. I thought you would want to know."

The monk looked into her eyes for a short time, and looked to be considering the new information she gave him. "Alright, what do you propose I do about it?" He asked, apparently more open to suggestions now.

"If you want to take the non-violent path," Xena told him, having thought it out on the way, "we can avoid them altogether if you leave Nagarahara tonight. Then if you're willing to travel with us south, we can be in Barbaricum on the coast in a few weeks."

"You seem to be determined that our paths lie in the same direction." Yeshua remarked.

"For now." Xena amended.

Issa appeared to be turning it over in his mind. "I have nothing more to bring with me than what you see. I had intended to leave before sunrise anyways before the rest of the monastery awoke. I suppose traveling home by sea is just as good as traveling overland."

"Good enough." Xena said in response, although she had been expecting more of an argument from him. "We can find another place to get some rest a little further down the road south."

"I won't prevent you from following your own path, Xena. The only thing I ask is that you allow me to follow mine." Issa told her.

"Fair enough." Xena told him, respect for him in her eyes. He would do what he had to, and so would she. She could live with that and respect it.

"Lead the way." Issa said with a calm smile in response, gesturing towards the path in front of him.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The sun rose golden red over the farmlands and groves of trees of the Sindhu river valley. It would have been almost an idyllic, vacationlike travel except for the bare desert mountains in the background providing a constant reminder of the hostile natural forces held at bay by the river's life giving water.

The barefoot bearded monk proved to be an interesting traveling companion during that first week of travel, but Xena couldn't find much fault with the man. He was humble, patient, and quick with a smile. True to what she knew of the practice of the yellow robes he wore, he only ate once a day before noon, and then only when someone was kind enough to provide him with something, though he never actually asked for anything from anyone except perhaps a drink of water from one of the wells they stopped at. There were times she and Gabrielle shared what they had with him, and there were others, after they ran out of money, where he would share what little he received in the simple wooden bowl he carried with them. There were even a couple of times when he had been given a good portion of roast pork when, instead of eating any himself, he chose to give the whole amount to she and Gabrielle and he just went without for the day. Gabrielle tried to insist that he take some, but he insisted in return that he couldn't. It was against the religious law of his own people, the Judeans.

He was indeed an enigma as he passed through the different villages. He would smile and speak with rich man or beggar alike, and didn't seem to make any distinction between the two. He would be offered a dinar for their journey south by some devout follower of the Buddha only to turn around and press it into the hand of an old woman begging by the side of the road for her daily bread. He seemed to almost be aggressive in taking no thought for himself or his own well being.

One surprising thing which he did not do was preach at either Xena or Gabrielle. When one of them would ask him a question regarding himself or his father, he would answer it with neither pomposity or self-righteousness. There was a sincerity to the man which she had rarely, if ever found. In fact she could think of only one other man whom she had met who seemed so unpretentious, and he also was a son of a god. Perhaps there was something about having divine blood in your veins that made it so you didn't feel the need.

They were still two weeks on foot from Barbaricum, the city the local people called "Karachi" in their own tongue. Issa seemed in no hurry to get there either as they entered the small farming village along the road. He had been walking behind Gabrielle and Xena, and then as the two women continued on, Xena noticed that he was no longer behind them.

"Again?" She asked with some frustration, although it was difficult to become angry with the man. "If he insists on stopping and talking to every beggar he meets, it will take two years just to get to the coast. Forget about Judea."

Gabrielle pursed her lips, trying to hide a smile which didn't want to be hidden. It wasn't the first time Xena had "lost" Issa while they were walking. He had made a habit of ducking his escort when it suited him.

Gabrielle turned around to look from one end of the village to the other. At the end of the village they had entered it from she spied the corner of a yellow rub and a bare foot just having entered a house before they disappeared entirely. "There. I see him. He just went into that house down there. Should we just wait for him?"

Xena's eyes however were elsewhere as they darted from person to person in the village. "Not this time, Gabrielle. If Issa wants to keep it nonviolent, we need to be moving on. Now." She said, motioning discreetly with her eyes. Gabrielle followed the direction with her own eyes, not turning her head towards a group of lighter skinned muscular men down another path of the village who were trying and failing miserably to blend in with the dark skinned local farmers who were just coming out and heading to the fields for the day. They were trying to look everywhere but in the direction of the two women.

Gabrielle could just make out the outlines of shortswords and bronze breastplates under their homespun garments. "Right." She said. The journey so far had been without incident for the past week. She should have known better than to think their luck would have held out until the coast.

They non-chalantly head back towards the tiny wood and stone house Gabrielle saw Issa duck into, and without invitation or even a knock at the door, Xena opened the door and went inside, followed by Gabrielle.

After closing the door behind her, Gabrielle turned, expecting to have to find a tactful way of explaining to the house's owners why they had so rudely invaded their privacy. In front of her stood Xena, but she wasn't saying a word. There were two others, a man and a woman whom Gabrielle could hear weeping, but neither was complaining about the intrusion. Instead, all eyes including Xena's were transfixed on the sight in front of them, and no one spoke except for the quiet prayer Gabrielle could hear coming from their friend.

Issa sat on a small, rough bed cradling a little girl of maybe five years in his arms. Her face and arms were flushed red from fever. She was limp, her eyes were closed as Issa held her head close to his breast. "Abba," he said quietly. "release this girl from the heat which burns within her." He then whispered to the girl, "Little one, wake up."

As soon as he had whispered it, the redness disappeared from the girl's skin, and her eyes opened. The little girl looked into Issa's face and she smiled, and then looked around to see her mother. She reached out her arms for her, "Mama!" She said smiling, and the woman took the girl in her arms and kissed her profusely on her forehead, tears of joy flowing freely down her face.

"Thank you, lord!" The man said, the gracious thanks pouring from him. "Oh thank you! You have saved the life of my daughter! Please? Take whatever you want in return! I will tell everyone about what you have done for us!"

"No. Tell no one what happened here." Issa told him calmly but firmly. "No one must know how she came to be well. Not yet. Not until I've gone from here."

The man was taken aback, but nodded. "As you wish, lord." He said. "Please, will you take nothing for what you have done for us?"

Issa looked around the inside of the house and Gabrielle could see him lock his gaze on a single object It was a gilded, colorful statue of a six armed, blue skinned person with a fanged grin. Each arm held some kind of an implement. "I would ask that you give thanks to the Eternal Creator, because it is he who has healed your daughter. If you don't want this to happen again, burn that and don't allow it in your house again."

The man looked at the statue and blanched, "My god, lord? You want me to burn my god?" He said in shock and disbelief.

"Your god did nothing, and could do nothing because it is only a wooden statue. It was the Eternal Creator who saved her. If you are truly thankful, worship the one who has the power to not only take life, but to give it back." Issa told him, a fire lit in his eyes.

The man's color slowly returned as he thought about it. "What is the name of this Eternal Creator, lord, that my family might worship him?"

"My people ceased to speak his name aloud a long time ago." Issa replied. "We only call him 'Lord,' and that suffices."

"And what is your name, lord, that I might remember you?" The girl's father asked.

"People here call me 'Issa.'" Issa told him.

"Thank you, lord Issa." The man said, bowing humbly at his waist. "I will pray to your god now."

Then Xena spoke up as though she finally remembered why she was there, "I hate to interrupt, Issa, but we have someplace else to be. Now."

Issa turned his eyes towards Xena questioning, and then Gabrielle saw a flicker of understanding light up in his eyes. "Of course, yes. We must be on out way." He said, getting up to leave.

"Please, can you not stay even for a meal with us, my lord Issa?" The man asked.

"I'm sorry. My friend is right, we have a long ways yet to travel." Issa replied. He then raised his hands in a blessing upon them, and he and the two Greek women departed from the house after that.

"What happened in there?" Gabrielle asked him as they left the house. "How did you heal that girl from the red fever?" She had seen the disease before many times, but she had only known people to recover from it very rarely.

"By faith." He responded, and then didn't elaborate.

"What do you mean?" She asked, wanting more of an explanation than that.

"Nothing is impossible for my father." He said in reply. "If someone has even as little faith in him as, say, a seed from a mustard bush, that person could say to one of these mountains in the distance, 'tear yourself from your foundations and plant yourself in the sea,' and it would obey him." He then added, "He cares about that little girl, every little girl, more than you know." His voice became tinged with the strength of an emotion Gabrielle had rarely encountered before. "It tears him up to see what these so-called 'gods' have done to mankind."

"We can discuss theology later." Xena said in a low voice, her eyes on four large men that were indiscreetly moving their way from across the village, their eyes locked, she could see quite clearly, on the man in the yellow robes. She made to redirect her friends in a different direction, but Issa didn't move.

"It's no use, Xena." He told her, standing calmly hands folded in from of him as he waited patiently for the men to come to them. "We can't avoid them forever."

"No, I didn't think we could either." She agreed as she reached for the sword on her back, but Issa raised his hand to gently set it on her wrist, tugging with it for her to let her sword return to its sheath. "We do this my way, friend." He said to her.

"What are you going to do? Ask your father to send fire from the sky at them?" Gabrielle asked.

"No." He responded calmly. "That's not why I'm here, Gabrielle. I was thinking more along the lines of talking to them first. From the stories you've told me, there was a time you would have done the same."

Gabrielle looked down at the ground, trying to hide the hurt and angry expression on her face. "Did I really deserve that?" She asked silently. She was only trying to help him, didn't he see that?

The four men came closer, and then the shortswords which had been hidden under their homespun tunics and robes appeared in their hands, their faces adopting menacing expressions of disdain for the unarmed monk who made no attempt at defending himself.

"I think we've got a pretty good idea of what they want, Issa." Gabrielle quipped.

"You! Monk! You the one they call 'Issa?'" The ugliest one there asked.

"I am." Issa responded calmly, nonchalantly, as though he were chatting with a friend. There was nothing unusual in his response, or what he said; but it felt like all of reality around Gabrielle turned inside out and reverberated with his words, and she became dizzy from the sensation. She looked to Xena, and she could see her tall friend too having trouble with her balance.

The four men blinked a few times with a dazed look in their eyes, and one lost his balance and fell. "Uh..." The one who had spoken regained his balance and took a step back. "Uh..." He struggled with his words as Issa patiently waited, "Uh... We're here to put an end to your blasphemy!" He seemed to regain his courage as he pointed his sword uncertainly at the monk.

This time Xena made no move for her sword. In fact, she took Gabrielle by the shoulder and stepped back from him. "Xena, what...?" Gabrielle exclaimed, but the warrior woman just slowly shook her head, and motioned for Gabrielle to look.

"Well, gentlemen, here I am." He told them, still making no move to escape or to resist.

The four men looked at each other in confusion, as if they didn't know what to do next. Then the ugly one raised his own sword and began to swing it in Issa's direction, but the next thing anyone saw was a blur of motion flying out of one of the houses and knocking over the four men, shrieking madly as it did.

The blur slowed down into a mass of wild hair and skin which bled from several cuts through torn clothing as the creature tore into the men with teeth and claws, shrieking as it did so. The men were overpowered and fell helplessly under its blows. Then the creature turned its face towards Issa, and Gabrielle saw that it was a woman's face, but her eyes... her eyes were wild and fierce, and their was a mocking malevolence in them for a brief instant, until the woman caught sight of Issa. Then the mocking, crazed look in her eyes turned to terror.

"Ahhhh!" She screamed, and her voice was like no woman's Gabrielle had ever heard. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!" She screamed at the monk. "NOOO! I didn't do anything! Don't, please! This one is mine! Please Lord! I know who you are, Lord, Avatar of the Most High God! Please don't!"

She would have continued like this for some time, pleading and covering her face from him in terror so much, that Gabrielle actually began to feel pity for the deranged woman. Gabrielle looked to her companion asking with her eyes, "Have you ever seen anything like this?" But Xena's face was like stone watching the scene, paying attention to every detail. That gave Gabrielle her answer.

At the sound of the shrieking and screaming, those who were left in the village came out of their houses to see what was causing all of the commotion, and an audience formed for the spectacle happening in the middle of the village. "Demoniac!" Someone, an old man, cried out.

Gabrielle could see that this wasn't what Issa had wanted at all. He looked from face to face at the people in the crowd, mothers, children, old men, and those younger men that for one reason or the other hadn't gone into the fields to work today, who held a different occupation altogether. He became frustrated with the commotion the woman, or whatever was controlling the woman, was causing, and in a tone of voice which left no doubt as to his authority he commanded, "Shut your mouth and leave her this instant!"

The calm but firm command came in contrast to the commotion the madwoman was causing with her screaming and crying, but it had an immediate effect as the woman convulsed into a seizure and a ball of fire seemed to be forcibly torn from her body as the woman collapsed next to the wounded and bleeding men she had senselessly attacked.

Wordlessly, Issa walked over to stand over to the woman. He bent down and took her by the hand and raised her to her feet, her eyes opening as he did so. Gabrielle just barely made out the words he quietly told her, "Don't do it again, or it will come back. Burn them. All of them. And pray only to the Eternal Creator from now on." The woman nodded, then bent down again and kissed his feet. He allowed it, caressing her head as though she was dear to him. "I'm sorry!" She whispered over and over again. His voice became even more gentle as he said, "You're forgiven. Just don't do it again, little one."

Gabrielle then watched as he turned to the men lying on the ground, their swords lying scattered and useless. Their moans filled the air as blood stained their clothes from the injuries inflicted upon them. The arm of one man lay bent in more than one unnatural direction. Another's eye was no longer in its socket, but lay in the dirt next to him. The damage inflicted by the woman had been beyond anything a normal woman, even Xena, could have done with her bare hands. Gabrielle's gorge rose in her throat as she saw them, and she found herself feeling pity for them, in spite of what they were going to do. It was obvious to her that, in all likelihood, none of them would survive until the next day, and the night these men faced... she wouldn't have wished that on them. They were only hired thugs after all.

Gabrielle watched as Issa bent down and picked up the bloody eyeball from the dirt. His eyes became gentle with compassion for the man who had, only minutes before, been intent on killing him. He held it in his hand and the placed that hand up against the man's empty eye socket. The next thing Gabrielle could see was Issa taking his hand away, and the man having full use of two good eyes. Issa then placed his hand on the bleeding, shredded skin of the man's chest, and it began to knit itself back together of its own accord. He continued like this with each of the men, and each of their injuries. And at the end, he looked thoroughly exhausted as he spoke in whispers to each one of the men, bringing them to their feet. Their swords lay scattered on the ground, and they made no move to retrieve them.

"Avatar!" Another voice from the crowd called out. "An Avatar has come! A god walks among us as a man!" The cry was taken up from person to person as they began to praise him, and several got down on their knees, protrating themselves in front of him.

Issa then looked with concern on his face to the crowd, and then to the men and the woman he had saved from the demon. He then looked to Gabrielle and Xena, and the discomfort was written all over his face, "This isn't what I wanted." He mouthed silently.

"I was wrong, Gabrielle." Xena finally said, her voice level and even. Gabrielle could tell her friend was still trying to process what she had seen. "Issa didn't need us, or anyone else to escort him anywhere."

"No." She agreed. "Xena, why did he heal those men? They were going to kill him." She asked in confusion.

"It doesn't look that way now, does it?" Xena responded, gesturing to the scene in front of her. The four men left their swords where they lay, and looked to the monk with as much awe and reverence as the rest of the crowd of people.

Issa, wordlessly retreated back to the two women who had traveled with him. "Do you understand now, my friends?" Issa asked them.

"Yeah, I think we do." Xena answered for the both of them. Gabrielle didn't correct her, but she wasn't certain she really did understand. She had so many more questions now than answers.

"I wanted to avoid this, but the evil spirit in that poor woman forced it. Now things will be much harder." He told them. "I may not be able to travel openly, and neither will you if you stay with me."

"What about them?" Gabrielle asked, pointing to the men standing in the square behind him.

"They've asked to travel with me as far south as Barbaricum." Issa replied. "It seems they want to learn a new path in life."

"I guess you didn't need us after all." Gabrielle told him.

"You have both been good friends, and patient." Issa told her. "That is always a great need in this world."

"Then I suppose this is where we part ways. Maybe we'll meet again." Xena remarked.

"All things are possible." Issa returned. "If word of this spreads far, it may take me years to reach Judea after all. Perhaps we will meet each other on your return to Greece. If you make it into Judea, perhaps you can visit me. My family is from a town called Nazareth in the Galilee north of Judea. It's close to K'fernahum."

"We just may." Xena told him. "Go with your god, Issa."

"I will remember you in my prayers, Xena and Gabrielle." Issa returned.

Ares had invisibly watched the whole scene unfold in front of him, and he still stood stunned. He couldn't believe what his godly senses were telling him. "What. The. Hell." He said aloud, pronouncing each word slowly as he too, tried to make sense of it.

The monk was mortal. Ares looked at him every which way possible, and he could see nothing else but a mortal's body, bones, blood, and soul in front of him. But he looked into his eyes as the man looked up briefly while caressing the former demoniac's sobbing head, and was startled to find the yellow robed monk staring directly back into his own as if he could see him.

And then there was what the demon screamed at him. "I know who you are." What did it call him? An Avatar? Ares' Sanskrit wasn't great, but he understood it enough to know that an Avatar was a god who had been reborn as a mortal. What god in their right mind would even consent to that he didn't know, but it apparently happened on occasion.

Demons were insane as a rule, so Ares usually didn't generally put too much stock in what one said. They made good tools for terrorizing people and starting fights, but sanity wasn't their strong suit, and they could get out of even his control way too easily. But this one called him an "Avatar of the Most High God." Ares had no idea what that meant unless it meant his father. The highest god he knew of was Zeus. But, as much as Zeus loved to hang out with mortals, he never would have done what this monk did or subjected himself to.

There were two things which worried him the most, however. The first was that this monk had done nothing to defend himself, and as he could hear what he said to the thugs he was teaching others to do the same. There was no conflict. No anger. No hatred which he could feel coming off of him. No. All that Ares could sense from the man was compassion and lovingkindness for the demoniac, the men he sent to kill him, even the demon he sent packing for crying out loud! What was up with that?!

The second thing which worried him was that, like his bastard half brother, he was telling mortals they didn't need the gods. Of course his brother meant all the gods, but this one was preaching an Eternal Creator that Ares had never heard of. He would have just written him off as a crackpot, except for the display of power he had just witnessed.

And then there was when the man simply said two words that shouldn't have meant anything, "I am." It was like Ares felt, not just the world turning inside out, but existence itself, even the foundations of his own being vibrating as though it were speaking through him. No, he didn't care what his eyes and ears were telling him. This was more than just any mortal crackpot. He might not have been the brightest god on Olympus, but he wasn't the dumbest either.

"And especially this..." He searched for the word, but then spat it in disgust, "this love and nonviolence thing he's got going. Oh, that's gotta stop right now." He then looked at the four large warrior he sent to deal with him now following him like lost puppies. "But first, I need to find out what's going on with him. Somehow I think there's something Zeus has been holding back from me. Time I paid dear old dad another visit on Olympus." And then he was gone from the village.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Mortal words can't really describe what a god sees, hears, and experiences when he returns to the home of his childhood on Mount Olympus. Even time is somewhat more fluid and fuzzy than is normally experienced. All mortals usually are able to see and comprehend is the peak of a mountain, and if they are unusually perceptive and are able to make it that far, they might see the shapes of buildings at the peak. Most mortals however never make it that far. During Ares' childhood, those that did met a similar fate to ants under a magnifying glass to his gleeful squeals of delight when his parents weren't looking.

"Good times." Ares chuckled to himself as he materialized in his father's palace. Then his reminisces were over, and it was back to business as he strode through the gilded marble hallways of his father's palace towards the center of the structure where his father, at most times, could be found sitting on Olympus' throne.

Normally, he would have stopped and taken a few moments to collect himself. Even the god of war did not generally march into the throne room and demand answers from Olympus' king. There would be one less god of war in the world if he did. Normally, he would have been more reserved with his father, and even more respectful than he was with anyone else. That was his normal visit home to Olympus.

Today wasn't normal as far as Ares was concerned. His divine legs marched with purpose into the throne room without his usual pause to check himself. Today, Ares wanted answers about this "most high god," and his father was going to give them.

Zeus held the form of an older man with a salt and pepper beard, still muscular and viril in his robes which seemed to be made of cloud, wind, and storm. "Ares?" He asked with the majestic voice of thunder. "What brings you back here? I thought you were traveling in the east, pursuing that mortal warrior woman." Zeus said with a knowing look in his eye.

"Never mind that now, 'dad,'" Ares returned leaving his attitude unchecked. "It seems you've been keeping some pretty important information from the rest of us, unless you've told the other gods and just decided to leave me out of the loop."

"Watch yourself, boy." Zeus countered, lightning flashing behind his stormy eyes. "Remember who you're speaking to!"

"Yeah, the king of the gods, except I just found out that you're not." Ares told him.

Zeus' face became as hard as stone. "What are you talking about?"

"Yeah, I ran across this little yellow robed mortal casting a demon out of some possessed woman in India. Before he did, and all he had to do was order it mind you, the demon accused him of being the Avatar of the most high god. Now since you're still here on Olympus, and I can't foresee any reason why you'd choose to be incarnated as a mortal I've got to think it was talking about someone else, don't I, dad?"

Zeus' face blanched, and he looked as if he were going to panic as he stood up from his throne, and Ares could see plainly that the news meant something to him.

"You know what it was talking about, don't you? Spill it." Ares demanded. "Uranus is dead, so is Cronos. You diced him up yourself. So why was this very strong and very unruly demon cowering in terror in front of a barefoot, bearded beggar in yellow robes?"Ares stood looking up at his father, his arms crossed over his chest, waiting for an answer. He didn't feel like backing down, not now. If this was a new threat, he needed all the intelligence he could get on it before he could formulate a strategy to deal with it.

"Uh... this... this beggar, did he have a name?" Zeus asked, seeming distracted and confused.

Huh? Ares was dumbfounded. "Don't you know? Don't tell me that for all the time you spend watching mortals somehow you missed this one." His voice was soaked with sarcasm.

"TELL ME THE MORTAL'S NAME, ARES!" Zeus thundered in rage. Lightning crackled around him and struck the floors and walls. Ares had to duck and roll to avoid the strikes, any one of which could have seriously injured even him.

"They called him Issa." Ares told him, checking his attitude. "But I think it's short for something else."

"Issa?" Zeus repeated to himself. "Issa. How could I have missed it?" He said to himself as though Ares wasn't even there. "What is he doing interfering directly? He's only done that with one people and left the rest to us before. How could he be in India? It doesn't make any sense."

"What doesn't make any sense?" Ares asked, not understanding the god's ramblings. "What's going on, dad? Answer me! Who is this 'Issa?'"

"Did anything else happen? Did this mortal say or do anything else that caught your attention?" Zeus turned to look at him and asked him, ignoring Ares' own question. "Anything at all?"

"Uh... yeah, he healed a kid of the scarlet fever she had, and he healed and put back together the four goons I sent to take care of him. He's also been preaching equality among mortals, and that they don't need any of us only the Eternal Creator." Ares thought through all that he had observed and heard from the man. "Oh yeah," he remembered, "and then he just replied to the soldiers when they asked him if he was 'Issa,' and it felt like all of existence vibrated with his response and nearly knocked me on my ass. Does that count?" The sarcasm edged back into his voice.

"What was his response?" Zeus asked gravely.

"What difference does it make?" Ares asked, arguing. He was getting tired of this. What could possibly have his father so on edge? Whatever it was he wanted for his father to stop playing games and tell him right now.

"DAMMIT ARES! WHAT WAS HIS RESPONSE?!" Zeus thundered at him so hard and so loud, the sarcasm left the god of war, being replaced with the fear that seemed to be radiating off of his father.

"Uh... it was 'I am.' That's all, just 'I am.' Not 'I am Issa,' not 'I'm the great and mighty god Issa,' just 'I am.'" Ares told him.

"I need to consult the Fates. Right now." Zeus replied, moving towards a downwards staircase near his throne. "Come with me if you wish." He added.

Ares moved into step behind him, but tried one more time to get a straight answer out of him, "Dad, you obviously know who this guy is, or at least what he is. What's going on?"

Zeus was silent for the first few flights of stairs as they traveled downwards, and Ares had just about given up on hope for a straight answer from him. Then, out of the blue, Zeus began talking.

"The name of the God, the Most High God the demon spoke of is ' I Am.'" Zeus said as he walked. "He is not just the oldest and the first, he will also be the last after everything else has ceased to move or to be. You Ares, and I, and your mother, and all the gods you know of have a beginning. Ouranos and Gaia had a beginning. There was a point in time when the gods did not exist."

"Yeah, so, what are you saying?" Ares asked, not sure where this was going.

"I Am has no beginning. He is the only one who is 'uncreated.' Everything that exists does so only because he exists and because he has willed that it should exist. If he should wish it, a thing could not only cease to be, it could cease to be from both time and space." Zeus told him, his voice flat.

"That's impossible." Ares responded. "He'd have to be everywhere at once, and know everything about everything. Even you don't know that."

Zeus stopped on the stairs and turned to stare at his oldest son. The look in his eyes told Ares that the impossible was possible.

"So... So, what? He's the god of existence itself?" Ares asked, trying to wrap his considerable mind around it.

"You, me, the mortals, Olympus, Heaven, Earth, the Oceans, every thought in your head, even nothingness itself only have existence and form because he wills it." Zeus told him, but Ares' face must still have betrayed his lack of comprehension, so Zeus tried to simplify it for him. "Imgine a calm, clear pool of water." He gestured with his hands to try and illustrate what he was saying, "then someone throws a pebble in and ripples or waves from and roll across the water's surface."

"Yeah, so, what does that have to do with anything?" He still didn't get it.

"We and all of creation are the ripples or the waves." Zeus began to answer.

"So what is he, the stone?" Ares asked.

"No, Ares. I Am is the water." Zeus told him slowly and deliberately, and comprehension began to break over his warlike son's devilishly handsome features.

"Do you understand now, Ares, the threat this mortal and his teaching poses to us?" Zeus asked.

"Why haven't I heard about this before?" Ares demanded. "That's some pretty damned important information to have, don't you think?!" He swore at his father.

Zeus let out a long, weary sigh. "I'll let that outburst pass for now, my son." He told him, turning around and continuing his trek downwards. "I Am created my grandparents, and allowed them to procreate as you know. What you don't know is that there was a rebellion against him, and he tolerated it and let the rest of us continue to be."

"How nice of him." Ares muttered as he stepped down the stairs after the elder god. "How do you kill a threat that your own existence depends on?"

"You can't, and you don't." Zeus responded. "And even though it would be nothing for him, he doesn't wipe those who defy him from existence either."

"Why?" Ares asked, his mind thoroughly boggled as to why anyone wouldn't deal with their declared enemies decisively.

"I don't know. I suppose that he would consider it to be akin to murder, and he won't do that. From what I understand he respects the right of those who exist to exist. And he respected the right of the rebels to make their own choices, and allowed my grandparents, parents, and their siblings to keep the authority they had to govern the forces of nature and emotions. When Hera, Hades, Hestia, Poseidon and I were born, he permitted us our freedom of will and choice as well with the warning that our choices had consequences to them. He urged us to choose wisdom, compassion, justice, love, and to obey his will." Zeus said.

"Yeah, I can see how you followed that to the letter." Ares quipped.

They reached the door to the chamber of the Fates, and Zeus said, "Until now, he has only concerned himself with one family of mortals and their descendants, leaving the rest of them to us to deal with as we please. It's the reason why I counseled your brother Alexander to leave the Judeans alone when he passed through their territory. I had no desire to see my son felled in a battle he couldn't hope to win."

"I remember." Ares said, understanding now what he didn't then. "So what changed?"

"That is the question, my son." His father responded, his face grim as he pushed open the chamber door to the shadowy darkness of the chamber of the Fates beyond.

Inside sat three women, one seemed exceptionally young, as though a child; one was exceptionally old and withered, and one appeared mature and in her prime. They sat around a great weave of different colored threads, some brightly colored, some dull and plain, and some made of strands of the purest glowing gold.

Zeus approached the fates and said, "I have received news which troubles me. I fear danger for us all" He told them. "I would like your insight, my fates." He told the women as they acknowledged his presence, but continued their work weaving and snipping at the threads as their part in the tapestry was finished.

The king of the gods looked over the threads being woven into the tapestry of fate, studying it as though he were searching for something almost imperceptible. Then, finally, he pointed at one of the threads. "This one. Illuminate this section of the tapestry for me."

"As it has been since time beyond remembering, you will continue to rule supreme among all gods and men." Spoke the youngest of them. "Until such time as a child not begotten by man is born." Spoke the one in her prime. "A time which is fast approaching."

"Nonsense." Zeus spoke quickly and decisively. "Everything which breathes upon this earth does so by my consent." He then said, "show me this child's thread."

The fate who appeared in her prime, the fate of present time pointed to a thread which appeared an ordinary color of a dull blood red. "It is here, lord Zeus. The child already walks as a man."

"Cut this mortal's thread and let us be done with it." He ordered them. There was an almost maniacal appearance to his face as Ares looked on.

"I didn't think crossing this 'most high god' was a good idea, dad." Ares whispered to him.

"This is a mortal and under my authority." Zeus responded in a low voice. "When he was born mortal his life became mine to judge as is yours."

The three women stopped their work abruptly and looked at one another, a tension growing between them. The shears they used were set down on the table, and none of them moved to retrieve them and carry out the wishes of the king of the gods.

"I command you to cut that mortal's thread." Zeus ordered again.

"With respect, we cannot great Zeus." The oldest of the three responded, as their eyes lowered to the floor.

"Excuse me?" Zeus responded. Ares couldn't believe it either. The fates had never disobeyed an order from Zeus that he could remember. "Do you dare to defy me?" The lightning surged around him, and the air crackled with electricity.

"Great Zeus," began the youngest looking one, "the thread you point to runs throughout the tapestry of fate. All other threads depend on this one. If we were to cut it, the tapestry would fall into ruins. We cannot, dare not cut it."

"Then I will do it myself, and damn the consequences." The elder god said as he reached for the shears himself, but as his hand closed around them, the shears began to glow white hot and the king of the gods dropped them in pain, his hand scorched and burned.

"Those shears are not meant for you." Said the Fate of the present time. "Only we may wield them. Just as the sky and the storms are your domain, great one, so the tapestry of fate is ours. This was ordained by..."

"The most high at the beginning." Zeus finished for her, his anger and frustration barely contained.

"Only one has the power to cut that thread," said the youngest. "And he has chosen to walk among men as one of them."

"Wait, are you saying the only one who has the power to decided when that mortal dies is the mortal himself?" Ares interrupted. "That's insane."

The three fates did not respond as Zeus attempted to keep his anger under control. "I and I alone am the master of fate, not its servant. And I will certainly not be dictated to by you and especially not by a mortal!"

"You have asked for our insight, and so we have given it." Said the oldest woman. The youngest one pointed to threads of shining gold which ran through the cloth. "We urge caution, restraint, and submission to the one who guides the pattern of the tapestry we weave. While the mortal's thread may not be cut by us, all others are subject to meet their end at our hands, even yours, mighty Zeus." To this the aged fate added, "There are worse things than death, my lord, as you well know."

It was the second time in a very short space that day that Ares couldn't believe what he had just witnessed as his father practically tore his own hair out in powerless rage. The king of the gods stormed out of the fates' chamber as the shears calmly returned to their hands, and they continued their work of weaving and snipping the threads of fate. Ares followed behind his maddened father.

"I no longer care how, my son. Find a way to stop this man and his teaching." Zeus told his son, as he walked in front of him up the stairs to return to the throne room. "I give you a blank check to use. Enlist whomever you need to, use whatever tactics you need to. I will bring your brothers and sisters to bear on it as well. Our very lives depend on it."

He had waited for what seemed like an eternity for his father to give him such leeway. He has always imagined it as the biggest, best gift his father could give him. But as he looked into the elder god's eyes once they reached the top, all cause for celebration left his heart as he could see his father's sanity disappearing behind them. "Yes, father." He replied without the enthusiasm he had always imagined should follow.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Several years later...

The sun overhead had already begun its descent towards the great sea far to the west as Xena, chakram in hand silently lay in wait behind a rock formation with the armed zealots who had enlisted her aid. It was the road to Hebron in Judea, and a column of red shields and tunics flying the Roman eagle standard was coming down the mountainous desert road. It was the same column of soldiers who had just made their presence felt at some unsuspecting village just a few days before. The images of the men and women who hung on the crosses which lined the road leading from the village still burned in her mind, especially the suckling infants that had been hung from their mothers necks. She shuddered and rubbed her own swelling belly with her free hand just to reassure herself. The centurion who led the attack would never make Hebron. She swore it on all she held most holy.

Next to Xena was the younger woman who had been her companion and partner through her adventures for many years now. She wasn't as young as she seemed when they first met. Her strawberry blond hair had been cut shorter. There was a more mature look to her bright green eyes that came from things which Xena wished she had never had to see or experience. In each of her friend's hands was a sharp sai, deadly weapons which were a sharp contrast to the simple staff she had carried in her younger days. Gabrielle had grown up, and there was a part of Xena that was sorry she had lost the innocence her friend once held.

They could hear the footfalls of the hobnailed sandals growing closer and closer. There were at least a hundred men in the column on the road, but only a few dozen zealots laying in wait who had sworn vengeance for their slaughtered kinsmen. Surprise was their only advantage against the discipline and training of Rome she knew, and they had only one chance to exploit it. They had to wait until the column had almost passed them and hit them from behind. Some would have called it a coward's tactic, but here it was just good strategy against superior numbers. The zealots would engage the regular soldiers. Her target was the centurion who had ordered the slaughter. Once he was down, they might afford allowing some of them to escape. At least that was her thinking, whether or not the Judean zealots agreed to that was another story.

The marching of the soldiers began to thunder rhythmically along the road in front of them, and the Greek woman could tell they were just now passing them by. The warrior woman took the hot rage, and pain she had felt at the sight of the destroyed village and tempered it into cold anger that focused and cleared her mind to do what needed to be done. Xena's breathing, her heart rate, and even time itself seemed to slow down for her as the moment for battle approached. While it may have caused others to panic or to lose their control, the anticipation of battle always had the opposite effect for the woman men called the warrior princess. It was like coming back into the home she had grown up in. She could relax and just be who she was. And who she was didn't like Romans any more than the men spread around her and Gabrielle. As far as she was concerned, with the odd exception, the only good Roman was a dead Roman.

Around her, the bearded Judean zealots fidgeted, and she could hear the minor movements of their hands, the scrape of the stone against the metal blades which were pressed up against the rocks. Each of them wore a "tallith," a prayer shawl that hung down to their belt lines, embroidered with the six sided star which symbolized their people, and words written in the strange square script of their ancestral language which only their priests and religious teachers even understood any more. She was experienced enough at leading men into battle to know that these men hadn't seen much of it at all. Under other circumstances she would have advised these insurgent farmers and day laborers to return to their homes and forget about trying to take down the professional army of Rome. But their village had been slaughtered while these men were away. That, more than anything, was why she was right here, right now. They had a right to justice, and they weren't going to get it from the Rome controlled local authorities.

The noise of the column began to dwindle, and it was time. Xene crept up cautiously from her hiding place, taking great care to protect her belly, and peered across the road. She could see the backs of the red tunics and breastplates of the marching men. And riding next to them towards the rear on horseback was the centurion in command. She couldn't see any details of his face or head as these were covered over by his armored helmet.

With one quick motion, the chakram flew from her hand, ricocheted off a rock and struck the centurion in the back of his helmet before returning to her hand. Then when he crumpled from his horse and fell to the ground, she gave her signal for the men to attack, the Amazon battle cry which had caused many a man's heart freeze in fear during a battle, and they and Gabrielle charged the surprised soldiers from behind. Xena drew her own, well used blade and joined them.

The Roman soldiers, used to having their formation orders barked at them by their centurion, were in disarray as they tried to respond to the new threat. Roman shortswords were pulled to meet the unknown threat from behind. Two of them went to check on their centurion and drag his unmoving form into the middle of the hastily constructed formation of men. "Damn, he's still alive," Xena thought as she saw it, slashing at the midsection of one of the Romans then turning and impaling another, only to using the chakram in her other hand on the throats of a third and fourth in rapid succession.

What the zealots lacked in training they made up for in zeal fighting as the vengeful men who had little left to lose that they were. It was a sight she had seen in many battles where a single man who had nothing left to lose suddenly had no fear of death and became worth more than ten hired soldiers. She had faced a few herself in her previous life and had lost good, skilled mercenaries as a result. More Romans went down under their crudely forged swords, and Gabrielle's sai rendered several more unable to continue fighting.

Xena worked her way from soldier to soldier towards the center. She kept the images of the nursing infants crucified with their mothers firmly in her mind as she struck and struck like their avenging angel of death, blood from her victims spattering over her Greek armor and across her face, flecks of its coppery taste make their way into her mouth as she spat the Roman filth back out. She struck down the two soldiers guarding their commander without breaking her stride and then turned to the man lying on the ground, still somehow conscious.

His helmet was off as he lay on the ground and her suspicions as to his identity were confirmed as she pressed her leather hobnail boot on his chest armor. He tried to go for a sword to defend himself, but her foot shifted to his wrist, and he cried out in pain as the nails from her boot dung into his flesh.

"Gaius Quintus." She said. It wasn't a question. His very Roman face had been burned into her memory at the beginning of the past year. "Remember me?"

The man looked up at her tall, dark Greek features blankly, and then recognition broke over his face, and he blanched as if he had seen a ghost. "No. That can't be. I crucified you myself on Caesar's order. I watched you die. You can't be here!"

Xena smiled malevolently and showed him the hole in the middle of her palm where the nail had been driven through. "Yes, you like crucifying women don't you? And old men, and infants who did nothing more than suck at their mother's breasts. What? Were they so greedy for milk that they had to die?" She mocked in disgust. She brought her sword around to his bared throat.

"Zealots, terrorists, the whole village." The man responded, his consciousness beginning to fade.

"Yeah, I'm real sure the young mothers were a big threat to Rome," Xena snorted. "Tell Hades, 'Xena sends her regards' when you see him." She snarled and then plunged her sword through his throat and up into his brain. She watched with satisfaction the life drain out of his eyes, and then spit in his face.

She then looked back at the rest of the battle, only to find the road littered with bodies, most of them Roman. Those that weren't were being dragged off by the men who had fought by her side, for proper burial according to their custom she knew. She then looked around for her companion, and found her standing as almost in a daze.

Xena sheathed her sword and came to stand next to her friend. There was a haunted look in her beautiful green eyes as she surveyed the carnage, and the road stained with blood mixed from the fallen on both sides. Xena didn't bother to count the dead. There were at least a hundred men dead on the road. She doubted any of the column had been left alive. As she looked around, at least half of the zealots remained standing. Never bet against a man defending or avenging his home and family, she thought with some satisfaction.

"Did this really have to happen?" Gabrielle asked.

"You saw what they did with your own eyes, Gabrielle." Xena returned. There were times she could have compassion for a fallen enemy, and then there were times she was happy to grind her boot in his lifeless face. This was one of the latter. "This is the only justice these men are going to get in this land for what was done."

"These men had families too." Her companion replied, gesturing to the corpses on the road. "They're waiting for them to come home, and they're going to keep on waiting."

"These zealots don't have homes or families to return to because of these men. They were acting under orders from the Roman authorities in Judea. Do you really think these men were going to get justice from a local court?" Xena argued.

"No." Gabrielle's voice hardened. She then turned to face her friend. "I realize that, Xena. But there has to be a better way than this." She told her, her eyes beginning to mist over.

Internally part of Xena agreed, but what that way was she had yet to discover.

One of the Judeans called out to Xena, "What do we do with the Romans?"

"Leave them. Let the vultures pick at them." She called back. Then she amended it, "Except for the centurion. Find some wood and crucify his body. Let Rome know what it feels like."

The return to the Judean village was somber as the weary men collapsed at the feet of the crosses in tears and wailing, looking up at the death masks of their loved ones, their grief and shock come fresh. They threw ashes and dirt on their heads and tore their clothes in grief at all they had lost.

Xena and Gabrielle had agreed to return with them and help them retrieve the bodies from the crosses. The Romans hadn't bothered wasting nails on these innocents, just ropes which had tied their hands and feet to the wooden beams, but it had been enough. The anger in her rose anew when she saw that none of the victim's legs had been broken. Every one of them had suffered for hours at least before they died of asphyxiation. She was enraged, but had no more outlet for it. The men who had committed the atrocity were already dead by her hand. And still these innocents remained dead. What was worse was that they now faced the judgment of Hades, the god of the underworld. Xena couldn't say he wasn't just, but his justice was cold and merciless. Silently, and to herself she prayed that whatever god this people worshiped would show them more compassion than the god of the dead would.

The rest of the night, and most of the next day had been occupied with burying the dead and burning the crosses on which they had been hung. The zealots ate nothing while they did their grim work and only drank when either Xena or Gabrielle brought water to them and insisted.

"Thank you, my friend." One of them, Shemuel, told her, taking the water. "You are a good person for an ethnic woman."

Xena smiled at that, but took no offense. It wasn't the first time she had been through this land, and Shemuel had been a friend of hers from years before. She and Gabrielle had been traveling in the north of Galatia when they had met up with the man. She had never figured him for a violent man until today.

"What brought you so far south, Shemuel? I thought your family was up north near Ephesus." She said, taking a seat next to him on the wall.

"Thank HaShem they are!" Shemuel replied. "This was the village of my grandfather." His eyes went to a grave that had only recently been covered over. "I traveled south to see if the rumors were true."

"What rumors?" Xena asked.

"That the Meshiach has come!" Shemuel responded. "I had hoped he would have already risen up against the Romans, but I see it has not come that far yet. My cousin Shimon is one of his disciples and travels with him. I had hoped to meet him here and then go and see for myself."

"What's a 'Meshiach?'" Gabrielle asked as she came over.

"In our language it means, 'Anointed One.'" The zealot replied. "The son of our ancient king, David, come to reclaim his throne in Hierosolyma and restore the kingdom of our people to glory. They say he has traveled the length and breadth of this land healing the sick, casting out demons, even raising the dead with only a word! I have heard he confronts the Tzadukim Roman lapdogs who control the high priesthood openly, and they can do nothing about it! They hate him. After we are done here, I want to travel north up into the Galilee and see this man for myself."

A memory of another man they had met years before stirred in Xena and she asked, "What's this 'Anointed One's' name?"

"In our language, he is called 'Yeshua,' but in Greek his name is 'Iesous.'" Shemuel said.

"There are at least a hundred men with that name from here to Hebron." Xena observed.

"Yes, but this man is from the Galilee, from a town called Nazareth." Shemuel replied.

"Did you say, 'Nazareth?'" Gabrielle asked, looking at Xena with a recognition in her eyes. "Xena, isn't that where Issa said he was from?"

"If you don't mind, Shemuel, I think we'll travel north with you to see this 'Meshiach' for ourselves." Xena told him, looking at Gabrielle for agreement, who gave it in a quick nod.

"Of course, my friends. I have already spoken with the rest of the men. They are coming as well. There is nothing left for any of us here now. Rome has taken everything. Word has gone out to all who support our cause about this man. We hope that when we come and bring him an army willing to fight the Roman bastards he will finally take his rightful place on David's throne and dispose first of that hateful Idumean, Herod, and then drive out the Romans once and for all."

The open field was far from any nearby villages, but that didn't stop the crowd from seeking the teacher out Xena observed. It had taken them several days to locate him, although it wasn't difficult. All they really had to do was follow the trail of people who shared stories of a prophet who had come through and healed a man born blind, or cured the sick with a touch, and they were led from village to village straight to this open grassy plain near the city of Bethsaida.

It had been several years, and Xena and Gabrielle were on the edges of the huge crowd, but she could see the man clearly. He had forgone the yellow robes of a Buddhist monk for the more traditional long white, though travel stained linen tunic and woolen coat common to the people of this region, though he remained barefoot. It was the same man they had left in the village near the Sindhu river.

"But I tell you who are listening to me today: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you." The preacher looked out at the audience, and his eyes looked as if they were looking straight at Xena's own as he said it, and she knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was him. "To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer also the other; and from him who takes away your cloak, don't withhold your coat also. Don't repay anyone evil for evil, but overcome evil with good. Don't avenge yourselves, because it is written in the prophets that God has said, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay.'" The man she had known as Issa spoke loudly and with authority to the crowd.

He spoke his words as he moved among the people, bending over and touching those who were sick, or had some kind of disability. Where there was a little girl whose legs were twisted into uselessness, Xena watched as he knelt down kindly, and with a smile placed his hand on the girl's head. The next thing anyone saw was the girl's legs becoming perfectly straight.

She could hear some murmering, but it was low and whispered. "What is he saying?" Some of them asked one another. "We should love the Romans?" Other were saying, "This can't be the Anointed One, he wouldn't even lift up a sword to defend himself much less the rest of us."

The murmering caught her attention and she paid closer attention to the make up of the crowd. As she looked across the man's audience, there seemed to be a disproportionate number of men sitting on the grass listening to his teaching. By her well trained eyes, she estimated there had to be at least five thousand men of fighting age in the crowd. 

The preacher continued, "As you would like people to do to you, do exactly so to them. If you love those who love you, what good does that do you? Even sinners love those who love them! If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive back as much. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back; and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil. So be merciful, even as your Father is also merciful. Don't judge, and you won't be judged. Don't condemn, and you won't be condemned. Release, and you will be released." 

"To love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself are everything the law and the prophets teach us. Our God loves and forgives all who come to him in repentence, and he demands that we do the same that we might truly be his children!" His voice carried across the plains.

He continued to move among the people, and the day grew later as Xena and Gabrielle listened and watched. "It doesn't sound like Issa's changed his message one bit." Gabrielle observed.

"No, it certainly doesn't, and judging by the looks on some of our friends' faces, it looks like he hasn't lost his knack for creating the wrong kind of fan club." Xena replied.

"You're right. I don't think this is what they wanted to hear from him." Gabrielle agreed, seeing the faces of many of the men in the crowd grow hard.

"What about the Romans?!" Came one man shouting. "Should we forgive them?!" Xena recognized it as belonging to one of the men with whom they had fought and had traveled there together with from the ruined village

"There is no authority except what come from God." Iesous told them. "Therefore whoever fights with violence against that authority, fights with violence against the one whom God has ordained. It is God who raises up and throws down, not men, and it is God to whom the authorities he ordains must answer." Once more, his eyes met Xena's as he said it.

Then some of Iesous' personal disciples came to him and discussed something with him that Xena couldn't hear clearly, just something about five loaves of flat bread and two fish. It was then she realized that neither she nor Gabrielle had eaten in some time either, and Bethsaida was many miles' walk from there.

Xena watched as he gestured to them and then to the crowd. He took some bread and some fish and said a traditional blessing in the local language, he then gave the small amount of food to the twelve men who surrounded him. As she watched, Xena thought she had missed something, because somehow each of the twelve received five loaves of bread and two fish. They then started handing that out to the crowd, passing it around to everyone. Somehow, even that amount of food was making it around to the thousands of people surrounding the man. Eventually, it made its way back to Gabrielle and Xena, and they were each handed five loaves of bread and two smoked fish.

Xena looked at the food in both hers and Gabrielle's hands with astonishment. She knew she shouldn't have been surprised. She had seen the magic and miracles of gods firsthand on many occasions, but it was never without strings attached. This felt different. No one was asking for anything in return, and Iesous did nothing to call attention to it. If she hadn't been paying attention, she might not have noticed where all the food came from.

She got up from where she was sitting.

"Where are you going?" Gabrielle asked as she bit into one of the loaves.

"I want to talk to Issa while everyone is busy eating." She responded.

"I'll go with you." Gabrielle said, beginning to get up.

"No, stay here, Gabrielle. Keep your eyes and ears on the men in the crowd. I'll be back soon." Xena told her, gesturing for her to remain seated. Gabrielle nodded.

Xena carefully stepped among the seated people. Several of them gave her annoyed or even dirty looks as she passed among them. Others, noticing her swelling belly smiled and moved aside, gesturing graciously. With these latter she tried to express some quick gratitude.

When she reached the center where Issa sat with the other men eating, one of them came up and tried to stop her. "Please, the Rabbi is eating. At least let him finish." He said.

"Your Rabbi is an old friend of mine," Xena began to say, trying to remain friendly. "I just wanted to say hello."

"It's okay, Petros." Came the voice she had heard teaching only moments before. "Let her pass."

The burly man stepped aside, and Xena passed him by into the teacher's inner circle. Iesous set down his food and stood up to greet her. He walked up and, much to the shock of the other men sitting there, embraced her warmly. "It's good to see you! How long has it been, Xena? Four? Five years? And I see you are with child! That's wonderful! You look beautiful."

His warm and affectionate greeting took her aback a bit, but she returned his embrace. "It's good to see you too, Issa. The last time we parted, I wasn't certain that we would meet again."

"What brings you into Judea?" He asked.

"Gabrielle and I were passing through and we stopped to help out an old friend." Xena replied, not going into the details of what that help entailed. "Issa, what is all of this? I thought you didn't want anything like this." She asked, remembering his reaction the last time his hand had been forced into displaying his powers.

"It wasn't time for me to be revealed to the world then. Now it is." He said simply. "My father tolerated the ignorance of the worship of other gods up until now, but that time is past. The message he's given me to preach to the world is simple. Repent, the kingdom of heaven is here."

"Issa, I don't know if you've noticed or not, but those men out there in that crowd aren't looking for a kingdom of heaven. They're looking for an earthly king right here and right now to lead them in revolt against the Romans. There's at least five thousand zealots out there just waiting to try and force you to be their king." She told him.

The men surrounding the teacher looked at each other with concern at this news, beginning to discuss it among themselves before looking to their rabbi, who nodded at the news, and motioned for his disciples to calm down.

"Then it's time we should be going. They won't finish eating for a while yet. We can slip away before they figure out where we've gone to. Why don't you and Gabrielle come with us?" Iesous told her. "You can tell me about what you've been up to in the last few years."

"Alright." She agreed. "I'll get Gabrielle."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

After their quiet exit from the plains near Bethsaida, Iesous had instructed them to go on without him while he headed off alone into the hills. After the encounter with the zealots, Xena had intended on going with him, but one of Iesous' disciples, Shimon, stopped her and Gabrielle saying, "Don't. The rabbi does this often. No harm comes to him. Please, you are welcome to join us until he returns."

There were the twelve men, Xena learned, as well as several women who traveled with the man they called 'rabbi.' Each had their own story to tell of how they met Iesous and came to follow him. They were a pretty motley crew of rough fishermen, zealots, a Judean tax collector for the Romans, none of the kind of men one would expect to follow a Judean religious teacher, and no Judean teacher that she had met before would have ever allowed one woman much less several to sit and study at his feet.

One of the women who followed him, Mariam from the town of Magdala south of K'fernahum, had been a demoniac like the possessed woman in the village along the Sindhu so many years before. Her voice dripped with adoration for the man who had freed her from the demon's grip, and her eyes lit up whenever she talked about him. A lesser man would have taken advantage of the attractive woman's devotion, but Xena could see none of that in her eyes.

She also was surprised to find out that one of the women who traveled with them was Iesous' mother, also named Mariam. She looked far too young to Xena to have a son in his thirties, but no one there questioned it. She smiled at Xena, and at times offered to talk about Xena's own impending birth as one mother to another. Xena tried to be polite, but avoided some of the more uncomfortable details of the pregnancy. Mariam then told her about her own pregnancy which was never supposed to have happened, and Xena listened to her story with rapt attention.

They had all boarded a ship bound for K'fernahum across the inland sea that evening, and most of them had taken the chance to get some rest during the voyage. Xena herself took the chance to close her eyes as she lay against the side of the boat. The effects of her pregnancy were beginning to weigh on her energy levels.

Around midnight she heard some of the men screaming in terror and her eyes flew open as she leaped to her feet, chakram in hand. "What is it?!" She called out to the big fisherman, Petros. Around the boat a squall had arisen as wind and rain buffeted the boat and the surrounding water. The waves of the sea were crashing into the sides of the boat angrily. That was bad enough, but it hadn't been enough to cause the experienced seaman to cry out.

"Look, out on the water! A phantasm!" He cried out, the pitch of his voice approaching that of a school girl's.

Xena's eyes followed his fingers as the pointed. There in the distance she could see a distinctly human form coming towards them slowly as though walking on the water. "Who?" She asked beginning to tense for a fight. It wasn't the sight of the figure which concerned her, but rather which god the figure might be, and what his intentions were. "Poseidon?" She asked in a whisper, her hand tightening on the disk shaped weapon, readying it for a strike.

The figure drew closer and then a familiar voice called out, "It's just me, Petros! Iohannes! Ya'akov! Drop the ladder to the ship!"

"Rabbi?" Petros asked calling out, his voice ringed with fear.

"Yes, Petros it's me! Don't be afraid! Drop the ladder so I can join you in the boat!" Iesous responded. "It's a little wet out here!"

Xena had to stifle a chuckle as she replaced her chakram on the waist hook on her armor. But the big fisherman, who, like all fishermen, held his fair share of superstitions about the water, wasn't fully convinced. "Lord, if it's really you, uh... command me to come out and meet you first!"

Xena's eyebrows raised at that. "And if it's not him?" She asked the burly bearded man. "You'll drown out there!"

"I'll take my chances." Came his response.

"Come on out, Petros!" Came the response. And the big man kicked the ladder overboard and climbed down to set his own foot gingerly on the water as he kept his eyes on his rabbi who was drawing closer and closer to him. He then took one step, and then another, and found himself walking on the water towards the approaching man.

Then, a little ways out, the big man began to sink into the water, and Xena went to the rail to get a better view of the situation. She looked down at her belly and thought twice about jumping in the water after him, but then looked to the other experienced seamen on board who were all just standing there, transfixed by what they saw. She heard Petros cry out in fear, "Lord save me!" And her attention was brought back to the water where Iesous was standing over Petros, his hand stretched down to grasp the fisherman's as he hauled him to his feet again. Iesous smiled and clapped the man on the back, and she just barely heard him over the rain call the man jokingly, "Shortfaith." Then the two walked back to the boat and climbed in.

When Iesous got into the boat after Petros, the rain and wind were still pounding hard. And the bearded rabbi turned back to face the sea. And for just a brief instant, she thought she could see a face in the storm clouds, the rain, and the water. "This is no ordinary storm." She said in realization.

Iesous turned and looked at her, nodding in agreement. He then turned back to the stormy face and yelled at it, "Shut up and calm down! No more tonight!"

The reaction was instantaneous as the clouds parted, the wind died down to a gentle breeze, and the rain stopped immediately. A tension could be felt on the cool night air as though a child had just been scolded by his parent and sent to his room.

Gabrielle, who had seen what Xena had seen, came to stand by her friend and asked her quietly and with a sense of unbelieving awe, "Did Issa just tell the gods of storm and the sea to shut up and behave themselves?"

Xena wouldn't have believed it either if she hadn't seen it herself. "I think Zeus and Poseidon just got scolded and sent to bed, Gabrielle."

"And they obeyed?" She asked, stunned. "Demons are one thing, Xena, but what kind of being has the power to tell the king of the gods off and be obeyed?"

"Apparently, 'he' does, Gabrielle." Xena said, motioning to the man who was just now nonchalantly sitting down next to his mother, Mariam, and closing his eyes to rest.

Lightning bolts flew and flashed around the throne room of Olympus as Zeus took his rage at being humiliated by that mortal, yet again, out on the walls, statuary, and anything else that was in his line of sight. Black scorch marks and ash marked the walls and floors of the otherwise empty, once majestic chamber. The ionized air filled with the burning scent of ash as Zeus unleashed his fury on anything within his reach.

Ares watched his father's temper tantrum from the safety of the corridor to the throne room. It was disconcerting, even to the god of war, to see the being who once seemed so filled with power and wisdom reduced to the madness of a two year old who hadn't gotten his way. And it wasn't just his father. Ares knew that in the depths of the great sea, Poseidon was in no fit state to receive visitors either.

"It pains me to see him like this." Came the maternal voice of his mother as she materialized next to him. Her eyes filled with concern as she looked into the throne room, but made no attempt to enter. "Was it the mortal again?"

"Yep." Ares responded crisply. "Dad and Poseidon just got scolded for trying to drown the man's followers."

"I see." She said. "The last time this happened, it stormed for weeks over the island of Crete."

"Yeah, that was as close as dad could get to Judea after he was kicked out." Ares remembered. It had been only a couple of years before. He had stayed clear of Olympus then.

"I wish your father would just give up and accept it. He's making things worse for us all." Hera told her son.

"I don't get it, mom," Ares replied, turning to face her, "What's your angle in all of this? According to the Fates, you're just as much in the line of fire as the rest of us. Why aren't you trying to deal with this guy, make his life miserable like you did my brother's?"

"There's a saying among one of the mortal tribes, my son. 'The whirlwind doesn't fear a fool.'" Hera responded. "I've been paying attention to Iesous, who he is, what he teaches, and what he can do. I would like to think I've acquired enough wisdom in my life to know what battles to fight, and what battles I can't win. My experiences with your brother taught me that. The God of the Judeans is no one to trifle with. I still remember how he humiliated our cousins, the gods of Aegyptus over a thousand years ago. I would be the mortal fool trying to make the devastating whirlwind fear me if I tried to stand against him."

"So you're going to stand back and do nothing?" Ares asked, not quite sure he was believing what the queen of the gods was selling.

"For the moment, yes." Hera told him. "He has caused me neither harm nor trouble. What trouble he has brought to Zeus and the other gods, including you my son, you have all brought on your own heads. If I stay out of his way, perhaps in the end he will show me mercy and let me be."

Self-preservation then, Ares realized. He could respect that to a point. "Is that what you recommend for the rest of us then? Stay out of his way and hope for the best?" He asked sarcastically.

"As a matter of fact, yes." She replied.

"Yeah, well, that strategy doesn't seem to be working for Hades and Thanatos." Ares told her. "Iesous seems to have a special vendetta against them. Charon's getting so frustrated at souls disappearing from his ferry that he's been forgetting to take their fares."

"Yes, I've heard." She responded, looking back at her husband, still continuing to storm and rage. "Let me know when he calms down." She told her son, and then disappeared.

"Yeah, when he calms down. Sure mom, I'll just babysit dad until then. Right." Ares quipped after she had gone, and then, taking one more look at the crazed old god who was screaming in impotent rage, he shuddered. "No thanks." He said and disappeared from his father's palace as well.

K'fernahum was one of the largest cities in that region along the coast of the Sea of Tiberias. It was alive with motion and people as Iesous, his followers, Xena, and Gabrielle entered into the town. There was something more familiar to the two Greek women in this city, something more like home in the columns and mosaics which were the products of the Greek and Roman influences on the region over the last several centuries of occupation.

As Iesous walked in on his bare feet, people began to recognize him and a crowd formed with people shouting out, "Please, rabbi, heal my son!" Or "Rabbi, my daughter is possessed!" And there seemed to be no end of people who brought their crippled, deaf, blind, and sick. As Iesous came through the city, he began to touch and heal as many of them as he possibly could. Much to Xena's and Gabrielle's surprise, his disciples began to address the demoniacs brought to him, and by their use of Iesous' name, the demons would flee in terror before them.

"You've got to be kidding me," Xena exclaimed as the crowd seemed to grow larger and larger. "The man hasn't even eaten breakfast yet. None of us have." She said as her stomach growled.

"He hasn't changed that much, has he?" Gabrielle observed. "He did the same thing in India, he just wasn't this open about it. I think they're going to be busy for a while. Why don't we try to find someplace to get something to eat?" She said, playfully patting Xena's belly.

"Yeah," she agreed, and they both turned to the rest of the marketplace which had suddenly emptied of customers. As Xena scanned the stalls for a food vendor that didn't turn her stomach at the smell, she spied someone who looked distinctly out of place.

"Gabrielle." She said, getting her friend's attention. Gabrielle looked away from the roasted fish vendor whose offerings smelled and looked more recent and appetizing than anyone else's.

"What?" She asked in response.

"Look, over by the cloth vendor." She said, motioning with her eyes.

Gabrielle's eyes darted in the direction Xena had mentioned until she found the one person who looked distinctly uncomfortable and out of place in his red tunic and breastplate. A shortsword hung in its scabbard on his belt. His face and features were classically Italian. He was young for a centurion, but there was no mistaking the uniform. He was looking this way and that, wringing his hands occasionally, as though he were trying to make a decision. Then he moved towards Iesous who was at the center of the crowd.

"Roman centurion." Xena said.

"Got it. He's moving towards Issa." Gabrielle responded.

Xena's chakram came off its hook and into her hand, but there were too many people in the way as she tried to get closer.

"Do you recognize him?" Gabrielle asked as she waded in among the people trying to get close to Iesous.

"No. But he's an armed Roman headed for Issa. That's all I need to know." Xena responded.

"There's too many people in the way for you to use your chakram, Xena." Gabrielle pointed out.

"I know that, Gabrielle." Xena returned.

The people parted for the man like they would not for the two Greek women, and he calmly walked up to stand in front of Iesous. The noise of the crowd died down as people wanted to hear what the centurion had to say.

"Rabbi," The man addressed him.

"Yes?" Iesous responded.

"I was hoping... My serving boy is very sick, near death. He's paralyzed and tormented by some unknown illness. Please would you heal him?" The centurion asked humbly.

Xena couldn't believe it. How could a Roman possible dare to ask anything of this man, or any Judean for that matter? And his 'serving boy'? "Oh please," Xena said sarcastically. She knew what kind of "serving boy" this Roman was so concerned about. Why else would he be so desperate to save the life of a slave?

"Your 'serving boy'?" Iesous responded, and the man lowered his eyes, unable to meet the rabbi's.

Xena almost felt sorry for the man, but he should have known better. The religious law of the Judeans condemned to death the men who practiced such relationships.

Iesous seemed to pause for a quick minute, and then he said, "Okay, let's go see him. Show me where he is."

Xena nearly fell over as her mouth fell open.

"Oh, no, sir!" The Roman quickly said, putting up his hands. "You don't need to come to my house. I'm also a man with authority, and I say to 'one slave' do this, and he does it, and to another 'do that' and the other does it. I know all you have to do is give the order and my boy will be healed. Please, that's all I'm asking for. I'm just an ethnic to you Judeans. I know that. You don't need to dirty yourself by coming to my house."

"And the Roman bastard doesn't want Iesous to see what's actually going on," Xena told Gabrielle in disgust.

"What do you mean?" Gabrielle asked.

"Please Gabrielle, do you really think a Roman centurion would be so desperate to save the life of just a slave boy if there wasn't more to it?" Xena retorted.

"Oh." Gabrielle replied, understanding what Xena meant. "Do you think Issa knows?"

"I don't know." Xena responded.

Then Iesous raised his voice so the whole crowd could hear, "Do you see this foreigner?"

"I think we're about to find out." Xena told her in reply.

"I haven't found faith like this even among my own people!" Iesous told the stunned crowd, mostly made up of his own people. "I tell you, many will come from the far east, and the far west and will sit down with Avraham, Yitzhak, and Ya'akov in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom will be thrown out into the darkness of suffering, tears, and pain!"

He then turned to the Roman centurion knowingly and said, "Go home. Whatever you believed I could do for your boy has been done."

A look of joy and gratitude broke over the centurion's face as he thanked Iesous profusely and then quickly departed back the way he came.

Xena swore. "Are you kidding me?" She asked in disbelief. "He did what the Roman bastard asked of him, and then praised his faith in front of a crowd of people that his people have oppressed and occupied for centuries?" She moved towards the center of the crowd towards Iesous while the crowd was still trying to digest this new message from the rabbi.

"What was that about, Issa?" She demanded of him. "You knew what was going on with him and his 'boy,' didn't you? Don't tell me you didn't! How could you, of all people, condone that!"

Iesous face was calm as he looked back and forth between Xena and Gabrielle who came up behind her and said, "Don't judge, and you won't be judged, Xena."

"What's that supposed to mean?" The warrior woman shot back.

"You and Gabrielle know perfectly well what I mean. That centurion and his boy aren't subject to the religious laws of my people any more than you and Gabrielle are." Iesous told her. "Why would I condemn either of them for their ignorance? Or you for that matter? Does the boy deserve to die because of the life he leads due to circumstances beyond his control? And you heard the concern and compassion in the centurion's voice just as well as I did. That is a very good start for the man to begin the path of lovingkindness and compassion, in the same way that your love for each other is a good beginning." He then added, "Love your enemies, Xena. It's the only way to truly conquer them."

Xena then held up the palm of her hand for him to see the ragged circular puncture made by the nail. "Should I love the Romans for this? Would you really be so forgiving of them, Issa, if they nailed you to a cross?"

Iesous gently took the scarred hand in his own, and Xena felt a warm itching sensation. When he released it, it was whole and perfect. "Wounds heal. Scars fade. And it is right to let them." He said. "No one wins on the path of vengeance, Xena. No one emerges victorious, because there is no one left to emerge at all. Forgive, and you will be forgiven." He said looking deeply into her eyes as he said it.

Xena felt like he was staring into her very soul, deep at the wounds inflicted by so many people, gods and mortals alike, and at the wounds she inflicted on so many innocents. Forgiveness for those crimes was the thing she wanted most in the world, and the thing which was always so far out of reach.

She took her hand back and remained silent.

Iesous then turned to the crowd and said in a loud voice, "the Kingdom of Heaven is like a certain king, who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves. When he had begun to settle, one was brought to him who owed him hundreds of thousands of dinars. But because he couldn't pay, his owner commanded him to be sold, with his wife, his children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. The slave therefore fell down on his face before him, saying, 'Master, have patience with me, and I will repay you all!' The owner of that slave, being moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. But that slave went out, and found one of his fellow slaves, who owed him only a hundred dinars, and he grabbed him, and took him by the throat, saying, 'Pay me what you owe!' So his fellow slave fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, 'Have patience with me, and I will repay you!' He would not, but went and cast him into prison, until he should pay back that which was due. So when his fellow slaves saw what was done, they were very upset, and came and told their owner all that was done. Then his owner called him in, and said to him, 'You evil slave! I forgave you all that debt, because you begged me. Shouldn't you also have had mercy on your fellow slave, even as I had mercy on you?' His owner was angry, and delivered him to the torturers, until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly Father will also do to you, if you don't each forgive your brother from your hearts for his misdeeds."

Then Iesous turned back to Xena and asked in much lower, but compassionate voice, "How much do you owe, Xena? Can you really say it doesn't compare with that Roman centurion and the work he's contributed to helping the people around this city, building synagogues and schools with his own income?"

Xena couldn't answer him. Gabrielle stood silently behind her friend, knowing the answer to his question tormented her companion's soul day and night. She also knew it haunted her even more since their recent experience with death in the underworld in the past year.

"Don't judge, my friend, and you won't be judged." He told her again. "Forgive, and you will be forgiven."

After a minute, Xena asked in a chastened voice, "How?"

Iesous looked into her eyes again and said sincerely, "All things are possible for my father. Trust me. It's why I'm here."

Xena sat by herself apart from the others in Iesous' camp that night, even apart from Gabrielle from whom she was normally inseparable. Heavy thoughts weighed on her mind, and the memory of recent experiences beyond death.

"May I sit with you, Xena?" Came Mariam's gentle voice.

Xena said nothing, but stared off into the distance. Mariam sat down on a rock next to her anyways. She looked in the direction Xena's eyes were turned and said, "Our land has it's own special beauty, I think. Perhaps that is why people have always fought over it. I have never traveled farther than Aegyptus. Is your homeland beautiful, Xena?"

Xena said nothing in response for some time. Then, sensing that the older woman wouldn't be deterred, she answered, "Parts of it." She said, remembering the hills and forests surrounding her own home city of Amphipolis at the northern end of the Aegean Sea. "I haven't been home for many years now."

"I see." Mariam said empathetically.

"My son has a way of bringing up powerful reactions and feelings in people. A person may love him for what he says and does, or he may hate him, but ambivalence towards Yeshua is impossible." She said gently. "Even when he was a baby."

"I'm sorry, Mariam, but I'm really not in the mood for conversation right now." Xena said, trying to end the conversation before it went any farther.

"I understand." The older woman said. "If I may ask one question before I go?"

"Go ahead." Xena said casually.

"My son told me once that he met up with some friends of his from the east on his return from his travels in the north of Galatia. He said it had been two Greek women in trouble with the Romans, I thought it might have been you and your friend."

"No." Xena responded. "We were in the north of Galatia some time ago, but we didn't run into him until yesterday."

"Strange." Mariam said in response as she turned to go.

"What's strange about it?" Xena asked.

"My son may not always say everything on his mind, but he has never lied. Not to me, and not to anyone else." She said. "When you showed your hand to him and said you had been crucified, I was almost certain it was you. I'll let you be."

"Why?" Xena turned and asked her. "Why were you so certain it was Gabrielle and I?"

"No one survives crucifixion, Xena." Mariam returned. "The Romans make certain of it." Then she departed to sit next to the other women around the fire, and leave Xena to her thoughts.

"It's a nice night, isn't it Xena?" Came another more masculine voice, much less welcome than the first. "I was impressed with your work on that Roman column a few days ago. It reminded me of the old days."

Xena didn't bother to face him. "What do you want, Ares? I'm not in the mood for you tonight."

"What are you and your annoying companion doing with these peace loving beatniks?" Ares asked. "It's so unlike you." He said as he came around to stand in front of her.

"Is this why you're here? To ruin my view?" She retorted.

"I'm here to talk some sense back into you." Ares told her, a trace of real concern creeping into his voice. "I have no problem with the Judeans wanting their freedom from the Romans. But do you really think this barefoot renegade rabbi is going to give it to them with his talk of peace and forgiveness? We both know the only way to deal with an occupying force is to drive them out with more force. You saw him the other day. I practically handed him an army, and what does he do? He slips out and goes for a walk in the mountains by himself. If he's not careful he's going to get himself killed, and he's going to take you down with him."

"Oh really?" Xena almost laughed. "And who's going to do it? You? Even Zeus and Poseidon couldn't stand up to him! He sent them back to Olympus with their tails tucked between their legs with just a command!"

Ares' face grew sober and serious. "You don't understand the kinds of forces at work here Xena, and whatever else happens I don't want you getting caught in the crossfire. Think of your baby if you won't think of yourself!"

"I think my baby and I are just fine where we are." Xena responded. "I've always been able to handle myself."

"I may not be able to protect you this time, Xena. Remember what happened with that Roman you were involved with?" Ares said.

"Yeah, you were a big help there, weren't you?" She snorted.

Ares sighed in frustration. "You and your little friend Gabrielle need to get out while you still can, Xena." He warned her again. "This is the last warning I can give you." Then he disappeared, and the night was silent again except for the conversations in the background behind her.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Gabrielle was worried about her best friend that night as the blond warrior bard sat closer to the fire and the people around it, but knew better than to intrude on her when she was like this. Xena had been more pensive and quiet since Issa's rebuke the previous day, and Gabrielle didn't blame her. A part of her was still upset with the Judean rabbi for confronting her like that, although the blond Greek woman understood his point. In some ways, it was a point she had been trying to make with her friend for some time.

Xena hated Romans, all Romans, for what the one Roman had done to her. Sometimes Gabrielle wondered if Xena remembered that they had shared crosses side by side, and that Gabrielle had been there too when Xena saw what awaited her in the afterlife, although to this day she still didn't understand who would have, or could have, defied the gates of Hades and poached their souls from the grasp of the lord of the underworld to return them to their own mortal bodies whole and sound. She looked at the palms of her own hands, the scars of crucifixion still embedded in them even as Issa had taken Xena's away.

Gabrielle couldn't blame Xena for her hatred. The man had been her lover for a short time, and then betrayed them both when it suited him to achieve his ends. It twisted something inside her friend so much that Gabrielle knew she was within a hair's breadth of losing her to the rage it spawned inside of her. And then there was the pregnancy to complicate matters.

There was only one man who could have been the father, but when Xena died, whatever baby had been conceived should have died with her. Whatever power had snatched them both from the underworld had also retrieved the baby as well. Xena never brought up the baby's parentage, but she rarely did anything... well, anything for her, which would endanger the life growing inside of her.

"Who do the people say that I am?" Came a voice near her, the words "I am" pulled her out of her thoughts and shook down into the foundations of her being. There was no doubt as to who asked the question.

Gabrielle turned to face the monk turned rabbi. His face was serious, and she realized the question wasn't rherotical. He was looking for his followers to answer, intent on gauging their reactions. Gabrielle would have thought the answer obvious from all that she had seen, but she kept silent as the question hadn't been directed at her.

"Some say you are the prophet Eliyahu, Rabbi." Came one of the men, she thought his name was Andreas.

Another one, the former tax collector they called alternately Mattityahu or Levi, spoke up, "Others say that you are Yeremyahu, or one of the other prophets from long ago come again."

Issa nodded, and took in this information. He then looked at all of them and asked, "What about you? Who do you think I am?"

His disciples were silent for some time, and Gabrielle could see it was a question they themselves still weren't fully sure of. Then the big burly fisherman who had gotten out onto the water with Issa (and nearly gotten himself drowned, Gabrielle remembered) shook his head at the rest of them and answered, "You are the Meshiach, the Son of the Most High God. With what we have all witnessed and heard from you, it should be obvious to all of us by now!"

There were a few stunned looks from the other men, as though it were something they dared not say. Gabrielle didn't see what the big deal was. She agreed with Petros, it should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain that the man was at least partly of divine birth. No regular mortal could do what she had seen Issa do, not even her friend Hercules whom she knew was half-god.

Issa smiled and said to him in reply, "You are a blessed man, Shimon son of Yonah. And I was right to name you 'Petros,' because it is this bedrock that I will use as the foundation of my assembly, and the gates of Hades won't be able to stand up to it." There was an almost triumphant, determined look in Issa's eyes as he said this.

She finally spoke up. "I don't understand. The gates of Hades are in the underworld to keep the souls of the dead imprisoned there. What do you mean they won't be able to stand up to your 'assembly?'"

Issa turned his gaze to Gabrielle and said, "You're right, Gabrielle. You're absolutely right." then he went on, "Did you know that, in the very beginning, Hades and those gods like him were only meant to be governors over the underworld. They were meant to manage the souls of the dead while their bodies slept. Instead Hades turned the underworld into his own little dictatorship, and the suffering of the souls of mortals is made all the worse because of it. The one who dies should be freed from his karma, not bound to suffer from it for eternity. This was never the intention of my father. Hades and his lieutenant Thanatos have much to answer for." Issa's voice became gravely serious.

"But what can you do about it from here?" Gabrielle asked him. "In order to face Hades you'd have to go down into the underworld." She pointed out to him, and aside from the few entrances that she knew of in Greece, there was only one way to do that.

"I intend to set things right, Gabrielle." Issa told her. "And you're right. There is only one way to reach the underworld from here." He said as if he had read her mind.

"What are you going to do?" She asked cautiously, not sure of where he was going.

"We're on our way to Hierosolyma for the Pascha festival of my people. At the festival, the Avatar is going to be betrayed into the hands of the high priests who will have me beaten severely, and then handed over to the Romans to be crucified, and then I'm going to die. Then on the third day from my death, I'm going to wake up immortal." Issa told her, and everyone listening, matter-of-factly.

"But I thought you were the Avatar." Gabrielle said in confusion. Issa nodded in confirmation, and then she understood what he was saying.

"You're insane." Came the voice of her companion from behind her. "No one comes back from the underworld on their own, much less challenges Hades on his own home turf and wins." Xena came up to stand next to Gabrielle.

Across from her, Petros had been listening to the whole conversation with dread mounting in his eyes and heart, "No, Lord!" He cried out. "I won't let that happen! It can't happen! You are the Meshiach! It's your place to rule from Hierosolyma not die in it!"

"Know your place, Satan! I'm talking about confronting gods and you're only concerned with human matters?" Issa scolded Petros harshly, and tears came to the big man's eyes. He looked as if, for a moment he would say something, but then he closed his mouth and and sat down.

Gabrielle was disgusted at Issa's response and as she looked at her friend's face, she could see that she was too. The man was just concerned for him. "Is this how you treat the people around you who are concerned for you?" She asked.

"There's no sugarcoating it, Gabrielle. If anyone is really going to be my disciple, he too has to deny himself, pick up his own cross, and follow where I go." He responded firmly, unchastened. "There's too much at stake for anything less. From now on the person who tries to save his own soul will, in so doing, destroy it instead, but the person who destroys his own soul for my sake will save it."

He looked at the blank stares all around him. "Don't you get it? What good does it do a person if he acquires the whole world, but then it costs him his soul? Or what would a person give in exchange for his soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and what I have to say here and now, the Avatar will be ashamed of him when I come again with legions of angels at my back!"

"What's happened to you, Issa?" Gabrielle asked. "It's like we don't even know who you are half the time."

"Maybe not, Gabrielle. But I hope that will change." Issa responded.

"I have no idea what is going through that mortal's head," Ares said out loud, somewhat confused but elated, "but I think he's going to solve our problem for us." After he masked his presence from Xena, he had been standing by, observing the group discussion, and the little spat between Issa's wonderful idea (as far as Ares was concerned), and the man's followers.

"Don't be so certain." Came the maternal voice of his mother as she materialized next to him, hidden, like he was, from mortal eyes. Her own peacock green eyes were gravely focused on the mad monk (Ares chuckled at the moniker he thought of), and she seemed deep in thought. "If he can send your father and uncle away with a word, what chance do you think Hades has against him?"

"You worry too much, mom." Ares told her. "As of right now, I'm all too happy to help Iesous with his plans for the future." And then he disappeared, leaving his mother to continue her own eavesdropping.

"Think about it," Iesous continued to speak with Xena and Gabrielle after the others had fallen asleep. "What happens to those who die? They go into the underworld, where they are either held in a paradise where they can't remember from one day to the next, the fields of punishment to pay for wrongs with Hades keeping the books stacked against them so they can never be released, or the fires of Tartarus which were never intended for human souls to begin with. If they're lucky, they're reborn only to suffer again in this life so they can die and suffer in the next, and Hades thrives on all of it. You've seen it yourselves."

"You're right. We have seen it." Xena told him. "That's why we're trying to talk sense into you. Why would your father abandon you to Hades? There are people here who would see you on a throne here and now."

"There's so much more to it than just the sufferings of my people here, Xena." Iesous told her. "Up until now, my father has left the rest of the world to the authority of the gods, and look what they've done. They've abused, tortured, and used them for their own sport. He cares about your people too, and the Romans, and the Sindhi, and the peoples of Chin, Jappa, Brittania, Eire, and all the other lands even you don't know about, and he has decided enough is enough. You yourselves have suffered much at their hands, as has your friend Hercules."

Hera winced as Iesous said Hercules' name, and then appeared to be looking straight at her when he said it. All that she had done to her husband's son as well as the countless other mortals she had personally tormented now came back to her mind to haunt her.

"So you're saying that the gods themselves are to be judged?" Gabrielle asked him.

"Yes." Iesous responded. "There is a reckoning coming for everyone, gods and mortals, and if my father doesn't show mercy, neither will be left standing."

"And is he going to?" Xena asked, the import of his words sinking into her soul like a lead weight.

"That's why I'm here. I didn't come to destroy anyone, but to save as many from the reckoning as will trust me to do so. That's why I have to confront Hades."

"But all those people are already dead, and have been judged." Xena responded.

"But they still exist." Iesous told her. "You act as though when someone dies they somehow cease to be, but you know that's not true. My father sees the suffering of both the living and the dead and it breaks his heart."

"I still don't understand how you intend to save them, especially those in the fields of punishment or even Tartarus." Gabrielle said. "They're where they are because of the actions they've committed in this life. Hades may be a jerk, but he's not giving anyone anything they didn't earn with their own karma."

"By wiping out their karma completely." Iesous responded.

"How?" Xena pressed him.

"I'm going to unite them to myself with a single sacrifice, and then, after I deal with Hades, I'm going to wake up immortal." Iesous told her.

"How?" She pressed again for details.

"You still don't understand who I am, do you?" Iesous asked.

"No, they don't, Iesous." Hera whispered, "but I do, now." She was still shaking and dizzy from the name he had used now twice. "And what are you going to do with me?" She asked, knowing somehow that he could hear her.

"And what about those who don't want to follow your message?" Gabrielle asked.

"My father won't violate anyone's right to choose to do what he wants or not, but it's their choice to accept the consequences if they don't." Iesous replied, his eyes drifting to meet Hera's own.

The next morning, Xena was woken up by shouting. She cursed herself for allowing herself to sleep as deeply as she had been, but there was nothing to do about it now. The pregnancy was making her soft, she thought to herself. She forced her groggy eyes to open and see what was happening. Next to her, Gabrielle was also just waking up. "What now?" She asked Xena.

The warrior woman didn't answer just yet as she slowly got to her feet to see what was happening. It looked like at least half of the crowd Issa fed near Bethsaida had joined them at their campsite and were now embroiled in an argument with the rabbi. Among them she could see some of the men she had fought with on the road to Hebron.

"You don't want me!" Issa shouted to them. "You just want the bread you had the other day! Moses did that trick too! He fed our people for forty years in the desert as they marched around the same mountain again and again. They ate all the manna in the desert they could ever want, and they still died! It isn't the food of mortals that you need! But the food which brings the life of the eternal!"

"What's he going to do now, make ambrosia for everyone here?" Xena asked dryly.

"I hope not. I'd hate to see most of these guys as immortals." Gabrielle agreed, not bothering to hide her sarcasm. "Xena, what are we still doing here?"

Xena paused before she answered, and Gabrielle realized she wasn't sure herself. "Issa may be out of his mind, but beneath that, he's still the same good man we met in India. If I can keep him from coming to harm, whether he wants me to or not... we owe him that much, Gabrielle." She then told her companion what Issa's mother had told her the other night.

"Is that even possible?" Gabrielle asked.

"I don't know, but if anyone could do it, it would be him." Xena responded gesturing to the man who was trying to speak to the crowd.

"Give us this kind of bread!" Shouted someone in the crowd, "and we will follow you!"

"The bread which I will give for the life of the world is my own flesh and blood."

Confusion immediately appeared on the faces of the zealots, "What?!" One of them shouted. "What are you talking about, Iesous?!" Called out another. "That's disgusting!" Someone else in the crowd said, and many agreed.

But Issa wouldn't relent. "Unless you eat the Avatar's flesh and drink his blood, you won't have life within yourselves. The man who eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have the life of the eternal, and I will awaken him on the last day. Because my flesh is the real food, and my blood is the real drink. The man that eats my flesh and drinks my blood will live within me, and I within him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so the man who feeds on me will also live because of me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven—not like out ancestors who ate the manna and died. The man who eats this bread will live forever!"

Xena and Gabrielle waited for an explanation, as he sometimes gave when he used an analogy, but none was forthcoming. The crowd was apparently expecting one too, but Issa remained silent.

The crowd looked to each other, eyebrows raised and Xena could hear the mutterings. Finally after some time, the crowd dispersed, and Xena heard many of them say things like, "He's no Meshiach. He's a lunatic."

Issa then turned to the men and women who had traveled with them, and Xena observed the shock, and stunned looks on their faces. If last night's rant hadn't been enough to drive them away, this would tip them over the edge she was certain. Issa had finally gone too far. And as she watched him, it looked like he knew it.

He composed himself and asked the men and women in front of him, "Do you want to leave now too?"

Most of their eyes went to the ground as Xena could see the men wrestling with the question. "Issa,..." She began to try and say something to diffuse the situation. She could tell everyone there was concerned about him. No, much more than that. They were devoted to their rabbi, and for good reason she knew. But everyone's faith had its limits.

But then, to Xena's complete amazement, Petros spoke up and said, "Lord, where would we go? And who would we go to? We've all given up everything to follow you. You are the only one who would give the lot us the message of eternal life. You've shown us again and again that you are the Meshiach, the Son of the Living God. I think I speak for all of us when I say we're not going anywhere without you." The fisherman was met with a chorus of agreements from all of them. "We're all with you until the end, rabbi."

Issa nodded, but there was a sad melancholy in his eyes as he looked at one of the men in particular. It was such a brief glance that no one caught it but Xena. As they finished getting ready to leave, she asked him, "What was that look about?"

"I chose all twelve of these men personally." He said.

"And?" She asked, not understanding his sadness.

"Didn't I say I would be betrayed in Hierosolyma?" Xena's eyes went to the group of men he had glanced at, but they had all gone to pack things up.

"Who?" Xena asked, eager to expose the traitor. But Issa remained silent.

"Issa, tell me who." She persisted. "Let me deal with him."

"Xena, I have to do this my way. He has done nothing yet, and I doubt he even knows yet that he's going to. Would you condemn a man before he's committed the crime?" He answered her. "By that logic my father would have destroyed the entire human race by now."

"Issa, if you know what's going to happen, and how, why don't you do something to change it?" Xena asked him.

"Because it has to happen this way, Xena. It's the only way it can happen." Issa responded.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Iesous stood in front of the chiseled stone tomb set into the hillside. His eyes were full of tears. Around him was a crowd of mourners for the man who had been a close friend of the rabbi's. Most were too busy in their own grief for the passing of the man to notice what the man some were now calling the "mad rabbi" was doing. Others were watching him carefully.

A day after they had set out from K'fernahum, Iesous had received a messenger on horseback from Bethania near Hierosolyma. He had been sent by two sisters who were begging the rabbi to come as quick as he could and heal their brother, Elazar, who was near death. The rabbi had sent him back saying that he would be there. And then they spent two more days in the same town for no reason that anyone who traveled with Iesous understood.

At first, Xena thought he might have finally seen reason and was trying to avoid going near Hierosolyma. But then, after two days he told them they were going to be on their way to Bethania so he could wake Elazar up from his sleep. They arrived several days later only to find Elazar had been "sleeping" in a tomb for the previous three days.

On the road, Xena and Gabrielle had picked up long linen tunics and woolen coats more appropriate to the people they were now traveling among to wear over their armor and weapons so as not to appear the threat they could be, especially to the local authorities. In other lands, it might not have mattered quite as much, but they already attracted attention to themselves as "ethnics" among the Judeans. The less trouble their presence caused for Iesous and his followers, the better.

"I still don't understand, Xena. Why did he wait so long to come down here when he knew Elazar was sick?" Gabrielle asked her in a whisper.

"I'm not sure either, Gabrielle. But it doesn't seem to be for lack of love for him." She said, observing the pain written on Issa's face. "Or for the man's sisters." She had seen how Iesous interacted with them. "I'm not sure, but I think they might be kinsmen of his."

"What do you think he's going to do now?" Gabrielle asked. "It's been three days. Hades probably already has him somewhere between Tartarus and the Elysian Fields. His body's got to stink by now."

"I guess we wait and see." Xena told her, scanning the faces of the people there.

She noted several old men present dressed in the robes of the religious leaders and priests of the Judean religion. They didn't seem to be there to cause trouble, and many looked sincerely saddened at the loss of the man. But there were just a few who only had eyes for Iesous, and not the adoring kind either. She could see anger in them, but what was the cause? She asked herself. Were they upset because he didn't come when he was summoned and now the man was dead when he could have lived? Or was it something less noble? She didn't have enough information to put the pieces together yet.

Then, behind them, she noticed two other faces that she recognized. "I'll be right back Gabrielle." She told her companion.

"Where are you going?" The blond woman asked.

"To talk to a couple of old friends." Xena told her.

The warrior woman made her way through the gathering of people to the other side where she saw the two who would appear even more out of place than she had Gabrielle here. What she didn't know was why she could see them, and the rest of the mortals couldn't.

"Was Elazar a friend of yours too?" She asked the divine woman, sarcasm dripping from each word.

"Peace, child. I'm only here to observe." She responded.

"And what do the queen of the gods and the god of war need to observe at a mortal's funeral?" Xena asked.

"Let's just say we want to see what the mad rabbi thinks he can do with a man Hades has already judged." Ares told her.

"You know this for sure?" Xena asked.

"Please, Xena. Uh, hello? God of war here." Ares snorted. "Of course I know! Hades actually went pretty easy on him. He's resting comfortably in the Elysian Fields. Something about being a good man or some crap like that. At any rate, we're just waiting to see if Iesous can put his money where his mouth is. Same as these gentlemen in front of us actually."

"If you're so worried about him, why don't you just kill him and be done with it?" Xena asked.

"I think you know the answer to that, Xena." Hera responded, never taking her eyes off of the grieving rabbi. "I think you know it as well as we do."

"Yeah, mom, we all know who you think this guy is, and how pointless you think it is to resist. I'm still not ready to buy it yet." Ares told her.

Xena looked at Hera as though it were someone she'd never met before. "Are you saying the all powerful queen of the gods is afraid of a mortal?" She asked.

Hera ignored her, saying nothing in response, and Ares looked at Xena and smirked as if to say, "See?"

"Take the stone away!" Xena heard someone cry out, and she turned her head in the direction of the sound. It had come from Iesous.

"What's he doing now?" She asked.

"Well, I guess we get to see whether or not mom's right to worry." Ares told her, smiling in anticipation of the man's public humiliation. "To be honest, I don't think 'we' even have to do anything. After the suicidal prophet's public rants over the past week, he's almost driven all of his followers away anyways."

"Take the stone away!" He shouted again, and there were a few from the crowd who began to heckle him for trying to disturb the dead. He looked at the dead man's sisters, yet another woman named Mariam and another older one name Martha, his eyes pleading with them.

"Yeshua," one of them said gently to him using the name of his own tongue, her own eyes red from crying, "He's gone." She told him. "It's been three days, and his body will already be smelling. There's nothing more anyone can do."

"Martha," Iesous told her, his own voice choked with emotion, "your brother will rise from the dead."

Martha was brought up short, a flicker of hope come to light in her eyes, and then Xena could see it fading again as she said, "As will we all, Yeshua, on the last day." She said trying to comfort her kinsman.

Iesous then turned and looked her in the eyes, and what Xena saw in his eyes wasn't madness, but absolute certainty, absolute faith, and so much more that was indescribable. And then came those two words that seemed to turn reality itself inside out when he uttered them, "I am," and as Xena steadied herself, she looked to the two gods next to her and they too were visibly shaken by the utterance as Iesous continued, "the resurrection, and life itself. The man who believes in me will live even if he dies. And the living man who believes in me will not die under any circumstances for eternity." Then he asked her, searching her face for a response, "Do you believe this, Martha?"

Martha looked shellshocked as she gazed into his eyes, and then she answered with fresh tears in her eyes, her voice filled with new hope, "yes!"

"Then tell them to take the stone away." Iesous told her.

Martha then looked to Iesous' followers, and she nodded vigorously, "Do as he says!" She called out. And several of them came forward to remove it. As they did so, the stench of rotting flesh and decay came wafting from the warm tomb.

The rest of the people fell silent as all eyes were now on Iesous and the tomb. Many of those dressed as priests looked on the scene with disgust, muttering about the rabbi using the woman's grief as a stage for his own theatrics.

As Xena looked to the two gods standing next to her, she could see that the smile was gone from Ares' face as he now watched the scene unfold as though on pins and needles. Hera's face remained unchanged and statuesque as she focused on the mortal she clearly feared.

When the heavy stone was pulled and pushed to the side, Iesous lifted his eyes to the sky and raised his voice, saying, "Abba! Thank you for hearing me! I know you always hear me, but these people need to know it now too!" He then turned his attention back to the tomb and shouted, "Elazar! Wake up and come out of there!"

The stony look on Ares' face turned even more sour and serious, "No. NO!" He said, thrusting both his hands towards the tomb, straining so hard it seemed like he was going to burst blood vessels if he had any to burst, but if Ares' had intended on affecting anything, he failed miserably.

"It's useless, my son." Hera told him, as she took hold of his straining arms and pushed them back down.

"What? What's useless?" Xena asked in confusion, then she heard the scraping shuffling sounds from within the tomb, like someone was trying to walk while his legs were bound, and she turned her eyes towards the opening.

Several of those in the crowd gasped, and others cried out in fear as a human form wrapped in linen cloths emerged from the opening of the tomb. Its arms and legs were struggling with the wrappings as though it was trying to unbind itself. "Help me!" Came a muffled cry. "Someone help me get these wrappings off!"

"Someone unwrap him!" Iesous called out to his followers. "Get the shrouds off of him." Still, no one moved a muscle.

Then a short, foreign blond woman came up from where Iesous' followers had been standing, disbelief in her eyes, but determination in her expression. She brought out a sharp knife and approached the wrapped man and began cutting through his bindings to free his hands. She then helped him remove the wrappings from his face, and uncovered the features of a Judean man in his late thirties with ruddy, somewhat handsome features, and a full beard with just a tinge of gray running through it. "Elazar?" She asked.

"Yes." The man responded. He then looked around at the crowd of people, "I must have fallen asleep, what's happened? Why am I wrapped up like this?" He then looked behind him. "Why was I in there?" He asked gravely.

Gabrielle didn't know how to answer him. She was at a loss for words as she turned and looked at Iesous for help in explaining it. Elazar's eyes followed hers towards his friend.

"Yeshua? When did you get here, cousin? What's going on?" He asked him.

"We have a lot to talk about, Elazar." Iesous responded. The man who had been dead nodded in confusion.

"I imagine Hades is quite upset." Hera said as she finally turned away from the scene, seemingly unsurprised by what she had just witnessed.

"Upset?" Ares said, his voice ringed with shock and disbelief. "No, mom, I'm 'upset'. 'Upset' won't even begin to cover what my uncle is feeling right now." He was visibly shaking with anger and, Xena noticed, fear.

"No. I imagine not." His mother replied. She then gave a knowing look to Xena. "I strongly urge you and your companion to leave this place my dear, for your baby's sake if not your own. It is no longer safe for either of you, even with your considerable skills."

"Gabrielle and I can take care of ourselves." Xena responded defiantly.

"Not this time, Xena." Hera responded, and Xena heard what she could only describe as an almost "maternal" tone to her voice. "Don't you understand what just happened, dear?"

Xena looked back at the man who had been dead. Did she understand it? She didn't answer the question, because she didn't know the answer herself.

Seeing her uncharacteristic indecision, Hera continued to explain it for her, "A mortal soul was called back to its otherwise very dead body and returned to life fully and completely with a single command from Iesous, and my brother could do nothing about it. The gates of Hades failed to prevent his release, or perhaps, even worse for my brother, they obeyed the voice of Iesous over the command of the god of the dead. Either way the result is the same. Iesous has now publicly humiliated the gods of sky, sea, and the underworld combined."

"I'm not exactly too fond him either with all of his peace and love crap, mom." Ares added.

"The big three," Xena said. "The most powerful gods of the pantheon."

"Just so," Hera acknowledged. "Excepting myself, of course."

"Of course." Xena didn't argue as she looked again at the rabbi who was now helping to take the rest of the grave cloths from his cousin, and speaking to him in the process. She then asked, "And why is that exactly?"

"Unlike my husband and brothers," the queen of the gods said, "I've learned, at some cost, to recognize a battle I can't win. But the men in my family don't know when to quit, or how to submit, Xena, even if it destroys them in the process." She said, gesturing to her son. "As you can see for yourself."

The anger and rage on Ares' face was building into a crescendo as he tried, uselessly, again and again to strike down the barefoot prophet. The rage was bleeding off of him and affecting the mortal priests who stood nearby also upset by what they just witnessed.

"Stuff it mom!" Ares said. "This mortal's going down!" And then he vanished.

Hera didn't respond to her son's outburst, but continued to speak to the warrior woman. "I'm sure you can understand this, child. Like you Xena, I have done many terrible things I am now ashamed of. And also like you, I too seek redemption for them. Whether I will or even can be granted it I don't know. That is up to him, I think." She said, looking towards Iesous. "I wrongfully assumed the title of queen of the gods a long time ago, but longer still before this my domain was the protection of mothers and families. The men in my family are about to bring down their wrath on that mortal, but it's not Iesous that I would worry about protecting." She said as she pointed towards the group of men and women in the crowd with whom Xena and Gabrielle had come to Bethania.

"It's those closest to him." Xena understood.

"Yes." Hera agreed. "Whether Ares and Zeus believe it or not, the gods cannot touch Iesous unless he permits it. That much has been made painfully clear, whether they want to see it or not. But those closest to him? What will happen to them if what he says is true and he allows himself to be killed?" Hera then gestured towards a very few clean shaven men in expensive white tunics with red trim and said, "You know the Romans have a special devotion to my husband and son."

The shocked and disturbed looks on the faces of the Romans only served to underscore what Hera was saying to her. Even from that distance, Xena could tell there was a heated, and fearful discussion taking place among them, and then they left quickly.

"You have already suffered at their hands once, child. Heed my warning Xena. Take your unborn child and Gabrielle and go home. Leave Judea before it's too late."

Then the queen of the gods disappeared with a soft flash of golden light. And Xena was left standing alone behind the priests, her head filled with questions and feeling more uncertain as to the best course of action for herself and those she loved than she had ever felt.

Xena was quiet the next night as she reclined around the low sitting table and sipped lightly from a cup of sweet wine mixed with water. The table itself seemed to overflow with food as Mariam and Martha had filled it to celebrate the return of their brother to them, and all of Iesous' followers were eating and in a festive mood, though always they kept one eye on Elazar, she noticed, as though he might keel over on them at any minute.

In truth though, there appeared to be two guests of honor at their modest banquet as Iesous sat next to his cousin, talking with him and eating as though they merely just hadn't seen each other in a long time. Elazar had been filled in on what had happened to him the day before, but he seemed to recall nothing of his time in the underworld. Or if he did, he shared it with no one. It was a topic of conversation Iesous seemed to steadily avoid as well as Xena heard him asking about various aunts and uncles, and about the well being of step brothers that lived nearby with their families which Xena didn't know that Iesous had. It would have been a perfectly normal get together with family and friends under other circumstances. But as things stood, it felt surreal and a little dizzying to her.

"Maybe it's just the wine." Xena said to herself, though she knew she hadn't drank enough to even make herself tipsy.

"What was that?" Gabrielle asked in a whisper, reclining next to her.

"Nothing." Came the warrior woman's response.

"Doesn't anyone here understand what just happened?" Gabrielle asked again, whispering so that only Xena could hear her.

"Do you?" Xena returned. "I'm not even sure I understand it."

After a little while, Mariam, Elazar's youngest sister came out with a jar in her hands. She looked at Iesous with nothing less than worshipful devotion in her tearing eyes. "Thank you,Yeshua. Thank you for returning our brother to us." She said, addressing the rabbi, and then whole room became quiet. She then carefully got down on her knees behind him.

"What's she doing?" Gabrielle asked.

The young woman opened the jar, and a fragrant aroma filled the room where they dined. Xena knew what it was by the scent, as she was certain many of the rest of the room did as well. In the past life she had abandoned, she had often spent a great deal of the spoils she won in her conquests to keep some for her own personal use when she had "entertained" certain male guests.

"Spikenard." Xena said.

Mariam then took the jar and deliberately spilled its contents over Iesous' bare feet and ankles. She then undid her long, raven black hair from its cloth bindings from working in the kitchen. Shaking it loose, she then bent down and used her freed hair to clean Iesous' feet with the spilled perfume.

The Greek women didn't know what to make of the display, but before either could say anything, one of the men spoke up, the man they called Yehudah from the town of Kriot. His face looked as though he had swallowed a whole box of lemons. "What did you do that for?!" He seemed livid. "That spikenard was easily worth three hundred dinars!"

Mariam looked confused and chastened by his rude rebuke, and Xena wanted to say something herself, but Iesous beat her to it, "What's that to you Yehudah? It was Mariam's to do with as she pleased, and she chose to honor me with it."

"B...but rabbi," Yehudah tried to say, "we could have sold that and given the money to the poor! Imagine all the people it could have fed!"

Iesous' look was telling as if to say, "Seriously, Yehudah? That was the best excuse you could come up with?" And it wasn't hard for Xena to guess there was more going on between the two of them than was being said. What the man actually said was, "That's enough. Leave her alone. No one is stopping you from feeding the poor Yehudah, but Mariam's been keeping this spikenard for me for a long time. She did a good thing. She just anointed me for my burial. I've told you before that I'm not always going to be here. Is Mariam really the only one who believed me?"

The mood around the table became somber after that as Mariam finished cleaning Iesous' feet with the spikenard. Iesous sighed as though he were a teacher whose students just weren't getting the lesson he had tried to explain over and over again.

"It's six days until the Pascha festival." Iesous told them. "This is going to happen. I've been telling you about it so that you're ready for it when it does happen. And it has to happen, you must believe me when I say this."

"Why, Lord? Why does it have to happen?" The youngest of his twelve disciples, Iohannes, asked him. "You have just proved that even death itself must obey you!"

"Iohannes, unless the single seed of grain falls into the soil and dies, it remains by itself. Just a single seed of grain alone. But if it falls into the ground and dies, it soon produces thirty, sixty, even a hundred times as much grain as the single seed alone. I've told you before, the man who loves his soul so much that he can't part with it will end up destroying it. But the man whose soul hates this world and the things of it will protect it and keep it for the life of the eternal. I don't want to die any more than you want me to, but if I don't then what my father has planned for all of you can't happen. Do you really want me to beg him to save me from what's coming? I love all of you so much more than that."

The room where they ate was so quiet when Iesous stopped speaking that Xena could hear the faint scurrying of mice in the corners.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

The "council chamber", if you could call it that, was tense, and that was just the way Ares liked it. It was filled with old men with long white robes and even longer white beards. He knew quite a few of them actually as he watched the proceedings, unseen to their mortal eyes. It was a few days after the upset Iesous had caused in Bethania, and Ares found himself in welcome company as he took in their anger and outrage.

At the head of the council was the High Priest of the moment, Yosef Kayafa. He wasn't totally useless as Judean priests go, Ares considered. He was almost as power hungry as they came, and he had a decent brain in his head. But the real power broker here, and the whole room knew it, was the man standing next to Yosef, the one who had been the last High Priest until he ticked off the Roman governor one too many times. Now this was a man Ares could, and often did, work with though not as openly as their "business relationship" might have been in Greece or Italy.

Actually, Ananus son of Seth, reminded the god of war a little of himself. No one could accuse the man of being a man of action, but there was a strategic mind there. He had been deposed as high priest by the Roman governor fifteen years before, but had managed to hold on to power through getting his son-in-law Yosef named to the High Priesthood where he continued to pull strings behind the scenes.

What was so much fun for Ares at this council's meeting was why they were so angry with Iesous. To the masses they publicly announced that they were looking for their "son of David" or "anointed one" to come and rescue them. But these men were incensed 'because' Iesous was doing everything they kept telling the people their anointed one was going to do! It was one thing to be telling everyone you were looking for your savior, it was another altogether to have one show up on your doorstep, especially one that refused to play ball like Iesous refused to play ball with them. In a way, this meeting was sounding more and more like the last council Ares had with most of the other Olympians with Ananus and Yosef playing the parts of Zeus and himself, except these men had to frame their complaints and arguments to make it sound like Iesous was actually a threat to their whole people and not just them.

"This cannot continue!" Shouted someone from the Parushim sect. These were the "conservatives" of the group who were great entertainment for him and the common "Joe Mortal" for their religious hypocrisy. It was something Iesous had been quick to point out to the people.

"Be careful of whom you humiliate in public, Iesous." Ares said unheard, grinning from ear to ear as he just nudged their anger to ratchet it up a notch. "It may come back to bite you in the ass and take a few chunks out."

"We must stop this man!" The same "Parush" continued.

Then another one spoke up that Ares wasn't quite as fond of, "He says nothing which is contrary to the Torah! He has shown us all the signs of the Anointed One!"

"Be quiet or leave, Nakdimon!" Ananus told him. "This man is a threat to all of the children of Israel. If you support him, you are against all of us."

"Good words, Ananus! That's what I like to hear!" Ares said, shadow boxing the air in approval.

Nakdimon let out a sigh of exasperation, but didn't goanywhere. Ananus continued, "If we let him persist, especially if he continues to perform these... these illusions," the old man chose his words carefully, "how do you think Rome will respond? Hmm? Do you not think that enough of our brothers and sisters line the road with their crosses for 'insurrection?' If we let him continue, the uneducated masses will follow him blindly and, even if he doesn't proclaim himself king openly, the masses will do it for him, and then the Romans will act and nothing will be left standing. You and I will share crosses side by side next to his, my old friend." Ananus' tone of voice became so touching and reasonable that Ares almost shed a tear and clapped, "Bravo!"

"So then what do we do, Ananus?" Asked one from the man's own religious party, the ironically named "Tsadukim," or "rightous ones." "How do we keep this from happening?"

"You know how." Yosef spoke up after listening patiently to the arguments, and Ares took notice, waiting to hear his brilliant idea. "We have discussed it many times. How long until the rest of you come to your senses?"

"I will not be a party to this any longer. Send for me when you have come to yours." Nakdimon told the rest of them in disgust, and then he got up from the stone bench where he had been seated and left the candlelit chamber.

"Yeah, good riddance ya' peacenik!" Ares taunted him, even though he knew the man couldn't hear him. "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!"

Ananus smiled and had to stifle a laugh, and that caught Ares' attention as he realized the man had been thinking the same thing. "Man after my own heart. I love this family." He almost became weepy with pride.

Yosef continued, "Think! Don't you think it's better for one man to die than for the Romans to wipe out our whole nation?"

"Sounds like logic to me." Ares agreed.

"But how? The Romans took away any authority we had to execute anyone, in spite of that stunt with the whore we tried to trap Iesous with. If we stone him, the governor will have us up on crosses the same day, and raze Yerushalayim to the ground in the process!" This came from another of Ananus' sons, Yonathan. Like father, like son, Ares thought.

"Then we get Pilatus to do it for us." Ananus told them.

"How? He has broken no Roman law that any of us can think of." Yonathan asked his father. "And certainly not one they would execute him for."

"Oh, I beg to differ." Ananus told them all. "He has broken one that Pilatus will have to nail him to a cross the same day for. Caesarus will give him no choice."

"And what is that?" Came a a Parush.

"He did it a few days ago, or don't you remember? When he came to Yerushalayim, and the masses shouted to the heavens, "Hail, Son of David! Blessed is the man who comes in the name of HaShem! Even Pilatus knows that the masses were proclaiming him to be the promised Meshiach, the 'king of the Judeans.' He can't possibly have not noticed it, even if he did choose to ignore it. No, it won't take much to push Pilatus to crucify him, not when he is so willing to order it for everything else. Then we will be seen as loyal subjects of Rome, and they will leave us in peace."

"I gotta admit. I'm liking this plan." Ares stepped in front of Ananus and spoke. "It's devious. It's vengeful. And the crucifixion thing is a nice touch. Now all you need is a patsy to turn the mad rabbi in to you."

"We have already spoken to one of his inner circle of disciples. He has agreed to hand him over to us for a mere thirty dinars." Yosef told them. "He is just waiting for an opportune time."

"I knew there was potential in you!" Ares proclaimed joyously. "I love it! You were actually a step ahead of me! Normally, I'd blast you for something like that, but I'm just in such a good mood, I'll let it slide!"

"So, is it settled then? Yeshua from Nazareth must die. Are we agreed?" Ananus asked the whole group. The rest of the old men nodded gravely.

"I must say, gentlemen. A very productive meeting indeed." Ares said, and then disappeared from the building.

"You and Gabrielle don't have to stay, Xena." Iesous told the Greek warrior woman as he sent two of his followers on ahead to check on a dining room he had made a reservation for that night. The night before the Pascha festival had come, and the group was walking towards Hierosolyma from Bethania to celebrate it. "This is a holy day particular to my people. You might find it rather dry and boring as we sit around the table and recite my people's history and sacred scriptures."

True. Xena thought to herself as she walked, but there was something more to it than that she could tell. He was trying to keep a light tone of voice, but she could hear something deeper in it.

"Actually, I'd love to hear it." Gabrielle, who walked next to Xena said. "I love good stories. You know that, Issa. I write them too. I'd love to hear the stories of your people and gods."

"God. We only have one, Gabrielle." Iesous corrected with a smile.

"Right, just one god. That's still weird to me, Iesous." Gabrielle told him.

Iesous just smiled, but he was troubled by her interest, Xena could tell. However, he refused to show it. "Alright, if you insist, Gabrielle." He conceded.

Good. Xena thought. Gabrielle had grown into a capable warrior with the sai hidden in her boots. She felt easier then. "You're right, sitting around listening to stories was always Gabrielle's thing. I think I might check out the local night life instead tonight." She told him, then gave Gabrielle a look which said, "Watch out for him." And Gabrielle nodded in understanding.

Iesous laughed. "I can't promise you much excitement in that way in Hierosolyma, my friend! Especially not tonight!"

"Oh, I don't know. There's always some kind of trouble I can usually get myself into." Xena told him with a grin.

Iesous smiled broadly at her intended meaning, and then the smile faded a little as he said more soberly, "Stay safe tonight, Xena. You, and your child."

"What, you don't think a Greek girl can handle herself in this town?" Xena teased playfully, trying to keep up the pretense.

"It depends on the company she keeps." Iesous replied. "Stay away from Romans tonight. They're bad for you." He told her in the same teasing tone.

She smiled, but she took his meaning clearly. She couldn't hide anything from him. "I'll think about it." She said in return.

Iesous threw up his hands in an "I had to try gesture," and said with a smile, "That's all I can ask."

Pontius Pilatus was just finishing up some paperwork on his desk as the sun began to set. It seemed like the work of a provicial governor was never done, and it all had to be documented for Rome. He had left the window open to allow the cooling breeze to come through and take the edge off of the heat which had left him sweating and feeling in great need of the baths.

He had only been governor of this backwater hell hole of a province for a few years, and he already knew it might very well be the literal death of him as he rubbed his clean shaven forehead to alleviate the stress headache which had been in place all day. Tiberias himself had warned him that one more insurrection and it would be his blood which ran red through the streets.

It was these damn Judeans and their nonsensical religious customs. Seriously, what god would command no images of him or anything else for that matter? Wasn't it only right, and the national duty of a province of the empire to raise its images and standards to the glory of Rome? There were some times, and they became more frequent with each passing day, that he cursed the day he accepted this appointment in Valerius Gratis' place. If he could have stayed in Caesarea, far away from the religious capital swollen with the mad religious fanatics with their ridiculous festival. Why anyone would celebrate that their own god didn't destroy them was beyond him.

And then this happened, and he was hard pressed to explain to the Legate of Syria, Vitellius, how over a hundred soldiers and their centurion were found slaughtered with no explanation near Hebron. Oh, he had a pretty good idea of who might have been responsible as the column had just come from rooting out a village of anti-Roman zealots. Those pieces weren't difficult to put together. But it was why they were slaughtered. He hadn't ordered the centurion to crucify the women and old men. That was the centurion's own initiative, and the brutal fool had paid for it with his life. What was worse is that those responsible had disappeared into the wilderness again.

But now the letter in front of him was an attempt to explain why it happened in the first place, and it didn't matter that he himself had only ordered the arrest of the men of the village. In the eyes of the Legate and possibly Tiberias, he might as well have tied the women to the crosses with their infants himself. No matter which way he spun it, it would appear that not only could he not keep control over the people, but he couldn't keep control over his men either.

"Having a bad day, Pontius?" He heard the voice of a woman speaking Greek behind him. What was even more disturbing than the presence of a woman who was not his wife in his residence was that he knew to whom the voice belonged, and she had died a year ago in the north of Asia Minor.

"Apparently worse than I thought, if I am being visited by ghosts." He said as he turned calmly to see the face of the Greek warrior woman to whom the voice belonged. "Or perhaps our latest 'Anointed One' paid you and your traveling companion a visit?" He said, his tone only slightly sarcastic. He still couldn't believe what his own lieutenants had told him concerning what this man had done, but he wasn't fool enough to discount it when he had hundreds of people saying the same thing.

"Let's just say I have friends in high places." Came the tall, dark, muscular warrior woman's response.

"I could say that I knew nothing about what Gaius intended, and I would be telling the truth if I did, but if you are visiting me here and now like this, ghost or not, I suppose I would just be waisting my breath, wouldn't I, Xena?" Pontius told her. "Perhaps you have come just at the right time. You might be saving Caesarus the trouble."

"That depends." Xena said, her voice even. She held no weapon in her hands, but Pontius knew that meant nothing. The woman herself was a devastating weapon when unleashed, the sword and divine disk she carried were merely accoutrements.

"On what?" He asked.

"On what you intend to do about Iesous from Nazareth." Xena told him.

Pontius rubbed his face with his hands and took a long breath and exhaled. "To be honest, that was the last thing I thought you'd be here to discuss with me." He told her. "But, fine, let's talk about him. What do I intend to do with the peace and love preaching rabbi who appears to heal the sick, raise the dead, and preaches for people to love their enemies. Hmm. I have to admit, that's a tough one." He said with a half smile. "Care for some wine? I can't say it's the best vintage I've ever had, but it's growing on me."

Xena's face remained stony, and he could see no love for himself in her eyes. "You look like you could use a good drink, my dear." He poured himself a cup from a ceramic flask. "The Xena I remembered had more humor in her eyes than this."

"Crucifixion by the man you love tends to sober a girl up." She returned, an edge to her voice.

"Doubtless." He said as he took a sip of the wine. "Really Xena, what difference does this wandering desert prophet make to you? The truth is that the only thing which concerns me about him is when he entered the city a week ago and the crowds were proclaiming him the "son of David." If that had happened when I first arrived in this madhouse I would have had him on a cross by the end of the day with his followers staked in the ground next to him."

"And now?" She asked, betraying no emotion that he could see.

"My spies tell me that every other time he has steadfastly avoided being labeled as a king or one of their 'anointed ones,' even dodging the people when they make plans to force him to become one." Pontius told her, sipping his wine in between sentences. "The fact that he tells these people to love their enemies is a help to me, not a threat, as every Judean from Galilee to the Negev sees us as their enemy. The last thing I need now is another insurrection, and arresting a man who hasn't so much as lifted a knife to slice bread would only incite his followers and the masses who listen to him. Besides, the high priests hate the man I am told, and they are a constant thorn in my side."

Xena nodded, and he could see that she was processing what he was saying carefully. "Why are you asking about this?" He asked.

"Because you are the only one who can order an execution here in Judea." She told him. "And he has a habit of making enemies of the wrong people."

"Well, I am not one of those wrong people, so you have nothing to fear." He assured her, and it was true. He had more pressing matters to worry about.

"Good." She said. "See that it stays that way, Pontius. Or you won't have to worry about Tiberias being unhappy with you ever again. I'll make sure of it myself."

"I see." So, Xena had taken it upon herself to protect the barefoot rabbi. What bothered him most was that she had thought it necessary to make this little visit. He had an ill feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had visions of what might happen if he crossed her, and the images weren't pleasant for him or the garrison here in Hierosolyma. "So noted."

She turned to leave the way she came, and he felt like he couldn't just let her go without saying something more. "Xena?"

She stopped, but did not turn around. Fair enough.

"For what it is worth, I am sorry. For everything that happened to you. Marcus was an honorless bastard for doing it to you. Whatever god or demon helped you to come back from the cross, I am thankful for it." He said sincerely. "Don't worry about the Galilean rabbi. He won't be crucified by me. Even I'm not foolish enough to be responsible for crucifying one with the powers of a god."

She nodded in acknowledgment, and then left.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Iesous, his followers, and Gabrielle finally made it to a large chamber in the upper room of a stone building in the part of Hierosolyma know locally as Mount Tzyon on the western side of the city. The young Greek woman had been absolutely floored at all of the people in the city that afternoon. She thought she had been in huge cities filled with people before in her travels with Xena. But Athens, Babylon, even Rome itself seemed like a small village in comparison to the sea of human bodies and animals which filled these streets. It seemed like the whole world had descended on the capital city of Judea, all of whom were trying to find someplace to celebrate their holiday. There were more people there than her language had words for as the city streets were jammed, and she couldn't turn around without bumping into someone and having to apologize.

She kept her head and hair covered with a shawl so as not to draw more attention to Iesous than was needed. She had learned that crowds could arise in moments the minute someone recognized him, and she feared that the crowd which might form here would literally crush all of them in the press of bodies.

The sun had just gone down when the "Pascha" meal had begun. Iesous had been kind beforehand to explain to Gabrielle all of the different rituals and what they signified. "We don't normally invite ethnics to these, you know." He had told her. "The rules my people have made surrounding the celebration have gotten so stringent that I'm surprised the Sanhedrin still allow the common Judean to participate."

"But I thought you said it was commanded in the contract your people made with your god." Gabrielle didn't understand.

"It is." Iesous said. "And that should tell you everything you need to know about my people's religious leadership."

"Oh." She said, finally getting his attempt at ironic humor.

"Normally, there's a child present for part of the ritual. It's not a big part, but it is considered important. Since you were interested in the stories of my people, I thought it would be fitting if you would play this part." He told her.

"I'd be honored." She told him. "What do I have to do?"

"It isn't much really. When I signal you, you ask, 'What do you mean by this service?' And then I will proceed to explain the meaning of the Pascha."

Then the meal began and they all reclined around the table. Gabrielle reclined with the other women, while the men stayed together and the table was set with the food. It was a strange setting, but it had been explained to her that everything on the table had been commanded in the religious laws of the Judeans. The meal that was set was made up of a roasted lamb and its entrails that she learned had been specially sacrificed to their god in the temple for the Pascha. There was also some kind of bitter leafy greens and bread that had been made without any yeast. Iesous had also explained that this was a part of the instructions given by their god.

As everyone was eating, Gabrielle noticed Iesous begin to look in the direction where the servants had gone, but they were nowhere to be found. He then looked behind himself and seemed to be looking at the feet of those nearest to him. He sighed as he then got up from the table, and the rest of the conversation at the table died down as he went over to the side of the room.

He then pulled off his outer coat, and then he stripped off his long travel stained tunic and laid both next to a wooden table on the side of the room and he stood there looking for something in nothing but a loin cloth. "Oh no." Gabrielle thought to herself. "He's finally lost it completely." And she moved to get up and try to convince the rabbi who had just stripped down to his skivies to put his clothes back on. But he saw her and waved her back down as he found what he was looking for. He retrieved a town from under the table, and a bowl and pitcher of water. He then wrapped the towel around his waist and poured some water into the bowl from the pitcher and brought both over to the women's table and began carefully to wash and clean off the filthy feet of those who had been either barefoot, like himself, or wearing sandals from the offal they had picked up from the streets below.

He washed his mother's feet, and then the other women. When he came to Gabrielle, he remembered that she wore leather boots like her friend, and then moved on to the men and began working through the literal crap that his disciples had accumulated.

To say that his disciples were horrified at the way he debased himself in front of them wasn't quite sufficient to describe the looks of shock on their faces.

"What are you doing?" Ioannes asked him.

"Someone should have done it when we came in." Iesous replied to him. "And after what we walked through earlier today we're all in desperate need of it."

Then he came to Petros who asked him in shock and shame, "Lord, you're washing my feet? Why would you do that?"

Iesous answered him, "I know you don't get it now, Petros, but you'll get it later."

Then Petros pulled his feet back and tried to keep Iesous from touching them, saying to him, "No, Lord. I won't allow it. You will never wash my feet!"

Iesous looked him in the eye and said, "Shimon, If I don't wash you, you can't have any part in what I'm doing." 

Then panic settled onto Petros' face and he quickly thrust his feet out and turned to offer his hands and face too, "Lord, please then not just my feet, but my hands and head too!"

Iesous smiled and then began to wipe off the filth caked on the man's feet. He said gently to him, "A man's who's already had a bath only needs to have his feet washed, Shimon. You don't need another bath, my friend. Of course, the same can't be said for all of you." He said, glancing to the right of the table, then he smiled and made a gesture with his hand jokingly indicating that a few of the men were a little ripe from the day's earlier exertions, and the tension in the room was eased as it brought a few chuckles, but Gebrielle noticed a pained look in his eyes as he glanced again towards one of the men, the one that kept the money bag for the group.

After he finished, he went and set the bowl and towel down, washed his own feet, then after toweling them off he put his clothes back on and rejoined the rest of them, sitting down with his legs crossed at the table.

Iesous then asked those present,"Do you understand what I was doing for you?" When he got blank looks in response, he continued, "You call me, 'Rabbi' and even 'Owner.' You're exactly right to say it, because this is what I am. If I then, your Owner and Teacher, have washed your feet, then you need to wash one another's feet, don't you? As your teacher, I gave you an example, so that you will do just as I did to you. You know this. No slave is better than his owner, neither is an emissary better than the man who sent him. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them."

Then his tone of voice turned more downcast as he said. "Of course, I'm not talking about all of you. I know the people I chose. But that the writing can be fulfilled which says, 'The man who eats bread with me has raised his foot against me.' From here on in, I'm telling you these things before they happen, so that that when they happen, you will believe that I am."

At these last words, the world seemed to turn in on itself and Gabrielle became slightly disoriented. The whole of existence seemed to be speaking, and Iesous made no attempt this time to dial it back as he continued, "I'm telling you, the man who accepts whomever I send, accepts me; and the man who accepts me, accepts the one who sent me." 

Iesous continued speaking and everyone fixed their eyes on him as he said, "I've been really looking forward to eating this Pascha with you before what I'm going to have to go through, because I'm not going to be able to eat it again at all until it's made complete in the Kingdom of God."

He then took a cup of wine, and gave a ritual prayer of thanks to his god. He then passed it around and said, "Take this cup, and share it among yourselves. I won't be able to drink any more wine at all again until I can drink it with you when my father's kingdom comes." He then poured a second cup, mixed it with a small amount of water and set it in front of him, but didn't drink from it.

The uncomfortable look on the faces of his disciples told Gabrielle that this wasn't going to be anything like the Paschas they had celebrated in years past. But then Iesous seemingly continued with the ritual, the distracted look in his eyes being pushed back as he focused on the unleavened bread on the plate in front of him. He then took the plate and raised it up for everyone to see, and it seemed like this was an expected part of the celebration as he again gave a ritual prayer thanking their god for it, and then he broke it in half. But what Iesous said and did next wasn't what the other Judeans in the room were expecting.

**"**Tonight is the night of the great sacrifice for our people. Take this all of you and eat from it." He told them as he passed the plate to Iohannes who was propped up on his elbow right next to him. "This bread is my body which is given for you. Do this in my memory."

Iohannes took the plate uncertainly, but he obeyed his rabbi's instructions and passed it along to Petros next to him who, after his previous flub, took a piece without hesitating. Then the plate was passed around the table until it came to the women and then to Gabrielle. Not knowing what else to do, she took a piece as well and then passed the plate along until it returned to Iesous empty.

Then Iesous nodded to Gabrielle, and she had to recover herself for a minute to be able to respond. It was clear Iesous had in no way given up on the idea he was going to die, and he was determined to make those who loved him most accept that it was going to happen.

Gabrielle looked him in the eye and asked more sincerely than she had intended, "What do you mean by this service?" Some emotion caused her voice to crack a little as she asked.

Iesous responded, "It is the sacrifice of my father's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Aegyptus, when he struck the Egyptians, and spared the houses of our people. Our people were enslaved by the Egyptians for four hundred years until they cried out to my father, and he sent his prophet to deliver them. He sent plague after plague upon the Egyptians and humiliated the gods of Aegyptus for the whole world to see. When the Pharoah refused to bend, he sent one last plague and gave these instructions. We were to sacrifice a lamb and spread the blood of the lamb on the sides and top of the door frames of our houses. My father then sent his messenger of death and took the lives of all the firstborn males from the houses of those who did not have the blood on their door, but the messenger passed over those houses that obeyed the command. After the Pharoah found his son dead the next morning, he let them go. My father delivered them from their slavery in Aegyptus and the lamb which was slaughtered that night and eaten became the foundation for the covenant he made with my people through the prophet Moses for him to be the God and king of my people."

Iesous spoke, not as though he was reciting a religious rite, but as though he were remembering something solemn. If it was a memory, Gabrielle could see from his expression it wasn't necessarily a happy one, but what needed to be done was done.

He then took the second cup of wine and said a prayer of thanks to his father. Then he again gave it to Ioannes, and told them all, **"**All of you drink from this cup. This is my blood of the new covenant which is poured out for many for the remission of sins. As often as you drink this cup, do it in my memory."

Gabrielle looked at the faces of the men and women as the passed the cup, and their expressions had changed as they each nodded and took the cup somberly, each person sipping from it until it too returned to Iesous empty.**  
**  
Then with all eyes turned to Iesous, he said the words none of them wanted to hear. "One of you here will betray me tonight."

Instantly the table erupted as each person asked in fear, "It's not me is it, Lord?" Angry words were exchanged and confusion ensued as they argued and demanded for one another to confess it. "Wait a second!" Gabrielle tried to get their attention to bring order, but it was no use. The bomb Iesous had tossed into the middle of the gathering had exploded and emotions were raw and bleeding as the men fought to discover the traitor he had just announced.

All the while Iesous kept his eyes locked on the one man who was trying very hard not to be noticed. Gabrielle followed his eyes, which seemed to be pleading with the man, to Yehudah from Kriot. This man's own eyes seemed to fill with anger at his rabbi, and just for a brief second, Gabrielle saw the same look in his eyes that she had seen in the eyes of some of the demoniacs Iesous had healed.

Petros, his own face filled with determination to find and put an end to the traitor, leaned over to Iohannes who was right next to Iesous and asked him, "Who's he talking about, Iohannes?"

The younger man then leaned back against Iesous' chest and asked him point blank, "Lord, who is it?"

Iesous then lowered his voice and whispered to him so low that Gabrielle couldn't hear what he said. But then he dipped a piece of bread in some kind of sauce and handed it to the man who looked at him with what was now approaching pure hatred, Yehudah from Kriot.

Then, with a look of pained resignation on his face, Iesous spoke up and almost non-chalantly addressed Yehudah out loud so that the whole table could hear him, "Do the thing you're going to do quickly."

Looks of confusion broke out over the face of the men who had been arguing with one another. And Gabrielle heard one say to another, "Maybe the Rabbi wants him to go give something from the purse to the beggars outside, I don't know." After that, Yehudah got up from the table, threw Iesous one more look, and stormed out of the room. 

When Yehudah left, Iesous's tone became gentle and tender, and the commotion in the room died down as he said, "Little ones, I'm only going to be with you just a little while longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the men from Judea, 'You can't come where I am going,' so I'm now saying the same thing to you. None of you can follow me this time. Not yet. I have to do this alone. I'm giving you a new command. Love one another. Just like I loved you, you also love one another. Everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another." 

He then said to them, "You need to be ready for this. All of you will be made to stumble because of me tonight. It is written, 'I will hit the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.' But after I've been woken up, I will go ahead of you back into Galilee."

Petros asked him, "Lord, where are you going?" His voice almost quivered from the pain. He didn't want to lose Iesous.

Iesous tried to answer gently, saying, "Where I am going, Shimon, you can't follow now, but you will follow me later." Then seeing the look on the man's face he said, "Be careful, Shimon, Satan asked my father to have you, that he might sift you like wheat from the chaff. I have prayed for you, that your faith wouldn't fail. When once you have turned again, establish your brothers."

Petros said to him in confusion, not able to process what Iesous had just said, "Lord, why can't I follow you now? I would die for you." It was obvious to everyone here that Petros meant every word.

Iesus answered him sorrowfully, "Would you really die for me, Shimon?" He then let out a slow breath and said, "The rooster won't crow before morning until you have denied me three times tonight."

"Don't be upset about this." He continued talking to them all. You believe in my father. Believe in me too. In my father's house are many residences. If it weren't so, I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for each of you. Know that, if I go and prepare a place for you, I am going to return, and will take you all to myself again so that whereever I am, you will be there too." He then said, "You know where I'm going, and you also know the way."

Another one of his disciples that Gabrielle hadn't really spoken to before said to him in confusion, "Lord, we really don't know where you're going. How can we know the way there?"

Iesous looked him in the eye and said to him, "I 'am' the way, Thoma; the truth, and the life. No one approaches my father except through me. If you knew me, you would have known my Father as well. From this point on, you do know him," and then Iesous turned his eyes to Gabrielle and said, "and you have seen him." The look in his eyes asking the question, "Do you understand yet, Gabrielle?"

Then another one, Philippos said to him, "Lord, show us the father, and that will be enough for us." And Iesous broke his brief eye contact with the young Greek woman and let out a sigh of near exasperation as he said patiently, "Have I really been with you for as long as I have, and you still don't know who I am, Philippos? The man has seen me has seen my father. After everything you've seen and heard from me, how can you possibly say, 'Show us the Father?' Don't you believe that I am within the father, and the father is within me? The words that I am saying to you aren't my own; but my father who lives in me has done all of these things. Believe me that I am within my father, and my father is within me; or else believe me for the sake of all the things you've seen happen."

Iesous didn't stop, "I'm telling you without a doubt the man who believes in me, the things you've seen me do, that man will do too. And I tell you he will do greater things than these, because I am going to my father."

For as long as Gabrielle had known the man, he had very rarely spoken so openly and directly about his own deity, but now it seemed like he was racing against a clock as he spoke, and threw all reserve and discretion to the wind with reckless abandon. His words seemed like an avalanche that once he had started couldn't be stopped as he continued, "Whatever you ask me in my name, I will do it, so that the father may be glorified in the son. If you would ask anything in my name, I will do it. If you love me, keep my commandments. I will pray to my father, and he will give you another advocate, that he may be with you forever,—the Spirit of truth, whom the world can't accept because it doesn't see him or know him. You know him, for he lives with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans. I will return. In a little while, the world will not see me any more; but you will. Because I live, you will live too. On that day you will know beyond all doubt that I am within my Father, and you within me, and I within you. The man who has my commandments and keeps them is the man who loves me, and the man who loves me will be loved by my father, and I will love him, and I will reveal myself to him."

Another disciple of Iesous' named Yehudah with the surname of Thaddeus said, "Lord, what has happened that you are going to reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?"

But Iesous answered him as though he hadn't heard the question, "If a man loves me, he will do what I taught. My father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him. The man who doesn't love me won't do what I said. The message which you hear isn't mine, but is my father's who sent me. I said these things to you while still living with you. But the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom my father will send in my name will teach you everything you need, and will remind you of everything I said to you. I leave you with peace. I give you my peace. I'm not giving it to you like the world would give it. Don't be upset or afraid. You heard how I told you, 'I'm going away, but I'm also coming back to you.' If you love me then rejoice because I said 'I am going to my father;' because my father is greater than I. I told you all of this now before it happens so that, when it happens, you might believe." He looked at each one of them, pleading with them to understand. "I'm not going to be able to talk to you for much longer because the ruler of this world is coming, and he wants nothing to do with me. But I am doing all of this so that the world may know that I love my Father, and because my Father commanded me."

He then said quickly as he got to his feet, "All of you, get up. We need to go. Now."

But the whole room was visibly shaken and upset even as the urgency was plain in Iesous' demeanor, and no one moved. There were tears running down the cheeks of all those whom Gabrielle could see, and she was surprised to find that her own cheeks were wet as well as she wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Eventually, one by one, everyone got up from where they sat or reclined and joined their rabbi as he headed for the stairs down to the darkened streets of Hierosolyma.

Finally, Gabrielle stood up and followed after them, not knowing what she should or could do to keep Iesous safe from what he kept insisting was coming.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Xena kept to the shadows in her local dress and robes. Neither her leather and bronze armor nor her weapons secreted underneath them made any sound. She was further concealed by her long dark hair and tanned complexion which, in the shadows, allowed her to be mistaken as a possible local, although no local woman would be skulking around what was possible the most populous city in the world at this time of night, or was it morning yet?

After her "friendly visit" to the man whom she had, at one time, counted as an ally if not a friend, the next item on her to do list was to get more information on the plans of the religious leaders she had seen at Elazar's tomb when Iesous had "awakened him." As a result, just at that moment, she was standing at the steps leading into the most massive structure in all of Hierosolyma looking through her options as to how to gain access to observe, and if she found it necessary, "visit" with the pompous, angry old men within. Her prospects for it didn't look good.

As she could see, the doors leading to the inner courts and chambers were still open, but guarded by the temple's own private police force. It wouldn't be the first time she would have to find an alternative way in to a building, but this one was a little more daunting than most if for no other reason than the massive solid wall which surrounded the complex and offered no leverage or cover for scaling it.

"We aren't exactly welcome in there, you know." The voice of Hera came to her, and Xena found herself standing next to the newly repentant "queen" of the Olympian gods. "Neither of us."

"Hera." Xena said, and then almost made a snide remark about the goddess going and offering a sacrifice for her sins, but then caught herself. Hera had been an evil, vengeful, lying, scheming, murdering bitch for as long as Xena had first had any interaction with her, and it wasn't difficult to imagine this new found repentance and even concern for Xena herself was just another scheme to cause someone more pain. But then Issa's words came back to her, "Don't judge and you won't be judged, Xena." And they cut into her own heart. There was a time, she reminded herself, that people said the same about her, and she knew they were right. She herself had been seeking redemption for sins whose consequences seemed to have no end. Xena held her tongue, and offered up a more friendly response than she had originally intended, "Because we're women, or because we're Greek?" She asked.

The goddess seemed caught off guard by her change in tone, but then recovered with a bit of a laugh saying, "A bit of both, I think." She then added, "The irony is that the God who owns this temple would at least be willing to hear both of us out and possibly grant us mercy I think, but that hasn't seemed to rub off on those who claim to represent him."

Xena nodded in agreement. "Not the first group of priests I've met like that." She said.

"I know why you're here, Xena, and who you're looking for." Hera told her. "I came to spare you the trouble and the unholy uproar it would cause if you were caught much less seen in there. The men you're looking for aren't here tonight. They're at the mansion of the one they call Ananus son of Seth, the man who used to be the High Priest before the Romans put his son-in-law in that position."

Xena nodded again in acknowledgement. She then turned to the goddess and asked, "Why are you so keen on helping me?"

"I've told you already." Hera said. "And now, I can't stay any longer." She told her as she looked to the sky. Overhead, dark clouds were gathering and blocking out the starlight. "My husband is coming and he intends to see this done. For yours and your child's sake Xena, stay out of his way tonight."

"You'd rather I just do nothing and let Zeus and Ares have their way with Iesous?" Xena asked her. "What happened to submitting to the Most High God?"

"I am submitting to him, Xena." Hera responded. "If he wants Iesous protected tonight, no force human or divine could touch him. If he wants Iesous to die, no one, not you, not me, not any god or man could prevent it. When we first learned of Iesous' existence, one of the first things Zeus did was to try and force the fates to cut his thread. When they refused, he took the shears from them and tried to do it himself. The fool received a nasty burn on his hand for his trouble. Do you know what the Fates told him?"

"No." Xena replied, not liking what she was hearing.

"The Fates told him that this man's thread was woven through the entire tapestry of fate and cutting it would destroy the tapestry and leave the threads in chaos. They were very explicit that the only person who could cut Iesous' thread was Iesous himself." Hera said. "And he was the only person who could restore it after it was cut. So you see, no one can take his life unless he wants them to, and no one can protect his life if he doesn't."

"So what? I should just stand back and watch it happen?" Xena raised her voice at the goddess. "I should just give up and let an innocent man be murdered for... for what? Because another god wants it that way? Is that justice? Human beings make their own fate, Hera."

Hera chose to overlook the warrior woman's outburst. "And this human being has already made his choice." She said a little more sharply. "If you claim to honor mankind's freedom to choose, than you must let him choose what he will."

"And let him die?" Xena snapped.

"If you honor who he is and what he is fighting in his own way for, then yes." Hera returned coldly, and then said crisply. "I must go. We may not see each other again after tonight. I wish you and your child well, warrior princess. If you will not heed my warning then you must know that as we speak, there is a group of temple police on their way to a garden the locals call 'Gath-shimon' on Olive Tree Hill. They're being led by one of Iesous' followers, a man called Yehudah from Kriot. They are going to arrest him and bring him before Ananus. If you hurry, you may be able to stop them." The queen of the gods told the Greek woman, and then she vanished into a ball of golden light, and was gone.

"Thanks," Xena said into the air.

Overhead the dark, menacing clouds had gathered and completely blotted out the starlight, as lightning flashed across the sky and the sound of thunder rumbled in the distance. "Not if I can help it, Zeus." Xena responded, and then took off running towards the place Hera had spoken of.

The night was cold and had an evil feel to it as Xena reached the garden, panting and trying to catch her breath in the springtime night air. Her pregnancy was taking its toll on her, she knew as he body was screaming at her to slow down, if not for her sake than for her child's.

She knew the place fairly well as she was bent over, her hands on her knees, and looked around from side to side. Iesous had brought them there several times over the past week. It was only natural that he'd bring his disciples here tonight after supper as well. The air felt like all the powers of darkness had come out to play, and Xena's skin crawled because of it. Her belly began to feel tight, and she held her stomach with one hand.

When she could stand up, she searched through the garden's walkways and paths in between the gnarled and twisted olive trees of the grove but the garden was empty. On one of the paths she found some small amount of blood like someone had received a bad cut, but it wasn't enough to assume a man had been killed, not yet at least.

"Iesous!" Xena called out. "Petros! Mariam!" She tried calling the names of the followers she knew, and then she called out, "Gabrielle!" But there was no response, and panic began to set in, as she began to move back towards the gate of the garden to try and make it to the house of the former High Priest.

"Whoa, slow down! What's your hurry? You know, you'd better be careful, Xena. We wouldn't want anything to happen to the little one, now would..." A the voice of Ares tried to finish before Xena had the tip of her sword's blade pressed against his adam's apple. "We." He finally finished. "It's good to see you've been keeping your reflexes in shape." He seemed in an unusually good mood.

"Where are they?" Xena demanded. "Where's Gabrielle? Where's Iesous and his followers?" She pressed the tip of her blade into his throat, in no mood for his games.

"Please Xena, I appreciate the sentiment. Really, I do. But you should really save it for someone you can actually kill." He said, pushing the blade away with his fingers. "Besides, they're fine. Well, most of them. Your annoying little blond friend has had kind of a bad night, but it's nothing a good cry can't handle. I hear she's good at that."

Without warning Xena spun her sword and slashed at Ares' stomach with a strike which would have disemboweled a mortal man, though it left no lasting damage on the immortal form of the god of war. "I'm touched that I can still move you like that, Xena." He said, grinning. "Well, if it were up to me I'd be happy to whisk you right into the middle of Iesous' trial and let you carve up those ridiculous old geezers until the stones run red, but unfortunately tonight, it's not up to me."He said and then a sword appeared in his hand. "Leave it alone, Xena, and walk away this time. Don't make me do something we'll both regret."

"Go to hell, Ares!" Xena yelled at him, and attacked him in an uncontrolled fury, slashing, stabbing, and striking with her sword again and again. Ares kept up with each strike, but only just.

"Really, all this over a peace loving, barefoot, Judean beggar? I don't get it, Xena." Ares told her as she attacked him with reckless abandon, pouring all of her rage at her feeling of powerlessness into each precise strike against him as he missed several and the sword bit into his immortal flesh. The god of war didn't seem to notice, but continued his questioning as he ducked, and returned strike for strike with his own sword with an ease which seemed almost absurd under the circumstances. "This really isn't even the normal kind of Joe mortal you usually fall for. What do you even see in him?"

Xena jumped back and yelled at Ares in fury, "DO YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW, ARES?!"

"Whoa! Hormones! Pregnant lady with a sword!" Ares taunted her, and she tried to, quite literally, take off his head.

"IT'S BECAUSE I SEE HOPE WHENEVER I LOOK AT HIM!" She screamed at him.

Ares took a step back, let the tip of his sword come down, and looked at her in confusion, "Come again?" He asked.

"I see hope!" She yelled at him again. "I see hope for my child! I see hope for this world! I even see what Hera see in him, and that's hope for her!" Her voice then cracked, and she lowered her sword, her energy almost completely spent. "And I see hope for me, too. I see hope that his father, this Most High God might have mercy on me for everything I did in your name." Tears came to her eyes like they had never come before. "That's what I see, you son of a bitch. I see a god who offers me something you never could, and still never can. And I refuse to let that hope die because of you, Zeus, or any other power in heaven, on earth, or in the underworld." She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and raised her sword again. "So if you want to stop me, you'd better be prepared to kill me, Ares."

Fear, anger, confusion, and then grim determination all flashed through Ares' eyes at once. "Don't make me do this Xena. I've always meant what I said, Xena. I've always loved you, but that love has limits." He said as he raised his own sword again, all hint of playfulness gone from his expression.

"Well then maybe I should be going with a god whose love for me has no limits." She said, and she raised her sword to strike at him again.

"No!" He struck back hard and the sound of the ringing clash of steel upon steel echoed across the city and the blows became more furious. "You're mine, Xena! And you will always be mine! You're just confused!" He yelled at her in a rage.

"No! I can see more clearly than ever now!" She yelled back at him. "And you haven't measured up in a long time, Ares!"

Ares then grabbed the blade of her sword with his free hand as it rained down upon him and held it frozen in place, deadly intent in his eyes, and then shoved the tip of his own blade through her swollen belly and up into her heart. "Measure this you peace loving traitorous bitch!" And he watched as the life drained out of her eyes as her body slid off his blade, leaving only a bloody smear on it, a stream of tears flowing from both of his eyes.

"Xena?" He stared at the body on the stony path in disbelief. "Xena?" He asked again. "Oh gods." He then exclaimed as he fell to his knees and put his hand over the damaged flesh and used his godly power to close the wounds, even restoring the body and heartbeat of the child she had carried. "Xena wake up." He ordered. He saw her chest rise and fall, he could feel her life's blood flow through her veins again, but the life didn't return to her eyes. "Xena, I order you to stand up again." He told the body, but it didn't move. "Dammit Xena, don't do this to me!" He raged. But she wouldn't move.

"XENA!" He cried out in pain and rage, no longer caring about his father's plans for the Judean prophet. "Somebody help me!" He cried out, tears flowing freely as he knelt by the side of the only woman he could possibly say that he ever truly loved.

The night became even more dark and threatening when the dark clouds had overshadowed the city as Gabrielle, her eyes red from tears that would no longer come, waited among the crowd of people outside the mansion of the High Priest, Yosef Kayafa. She, Iohannes, and Issa's mother, and Mariam from Magdala had just followed the temple police officers back to the mansion of the former High Priest Ananus, when they moved Issa again to the courtyard of the current High Priest. The news traveled swiftly that Issa had been arrested, and onlookers had come to see what they thought would be a good show, though little Gabrielle witnessed was anything but good, as the "court proceedings", illegal even by Judean standards she was told, progressed.

She had been there when the temple police had come with Yehudah and her first instinct had been to jump in between them, but she had found herself rooted where she stood, unable to move but only to watch, helpless as they beat Issa and dragged him away in chains.

During the trial, Issa had been beaten and slapped repeatedly, but he did nothing to defend himself with either his actions or words except once when he looked the High Priest in the eye and answered the man when he was asked outright if he was the anointed one, the son of the most high god. He said, "I am." And a tremor passed through the whole crowd as existence himself seemed to make his answer known to the old, white bearded hypocrite. Gabrielle wanted more than anything to pull out her sai and jump into the middle of them to free the strange, mad prophet who had become her friend. But she couldn't, every time she was just about to, it seemed like her arms and legs wouldn't respond and her sai remained firmly sheathed in her boots.

Then she heard the terrible, desperate cry in the distance after she heard a man's voice, one she recognized and loathed, crying out the name of her best friend. She had been standing outside the house of the High Priest with Mariam from Magdala, Iohannes, and Issa's mother, Mariam. Her face and eyes immediately shot in the direction of the heart rending cry of Xena's name. "Xena?" She asked out loud.

She turned back to the farcical trial and she was, for a brief moment torn at what was happening to one friend, and what she didn't know could be happening to her best friend.

Mariam's eyes also turned in the direction in which Xena's name had been yelled, and then she looked at the conflict on Gabrielle's young face and she told the Greek woman, "Go. We'll be here for my son, dear. Go take care of your friend."

"Thank you." She said gratefully, and then she took off running in the direction of the cry, but she felt she knew instinctively from where it had come and turned her run towards the garden they had just been in only a few hours before.

She arrived to find a dark haired man dressed in black leather on his knees next to the unmoving body of a woman, he was in tears and the emotional devastation he was suffering was written throughout every movement of every muscle of his body as great sobs wracked his immortal frame. "I'm sorry." She heard the man whisper. "I'm so, so sorry, Xena. Please, wake up. Please."

"Xena!" Gabrielle screamed and ran to the side of her friend, dropping to her own knees to check the woman's pulse and breathing. Her eyes were closed as if she were asleep, and her breathing was slow and steady. Physically, she looked fine. "WHAT HAPPENED?!" Gabrielle demanded from the god of war, not caring what his reaction might be.

He didn't look up at her. He didn't make a crude retort. He didn't respond at all, but continued to place his hands on her chest and head, frustrated and in despair at his seeming powerlessness. "Come on Xena, damn you! Fight this! You've never given up on anything in your life, don't do this to me now! Wake up!" He yelled in frustration, his hands glowing red, then orange, and then golden white with the godly energy he was pouring into them. But Xena's eyes wouldn't open.

"What happened?!" She demanded from him again.

"Not now, you annoying little blond!" He finally shouted back, not raising his eyes from Xena's inert frame, pain and anger filling his voice. "Can't you see I'm trying to bring her back?!" He was concentrating so hard that it looked like he was going to harm himself from the effort.

"What do you mean, bring her back?! She's still alive isn't she?" Gabrielle demanded from him.

"I uh... I..." Tears came to his eyes and Gabrielle understood what had happened. He then stopped trying to say what he couldn't bring himself to admit to himself and said, "But I'm trying to fix it, okay? So just shut your annoying little mouth and let me concentrate! I can do this!"

"What exactly are you trying to do?" Gabrielle asked, trying to understand.

Ares responded tensely, "Her soul's already left her body. I healed the wounds I... I made. Her body's alive, but her soul's not here. I'm trying to call it back from..."

"From Hades' grasp." Gabrielle finished for him, the realization hitting her like a falling boulder. "And you can't. Can you?" She asked.

"I..." He had been about to yell at her in anger again, but then he stopped himself, and said quietly in defeat, "No. I don't have any power over my uncle, and he doesn't do me or anyone any special favors. Her body will live for a short time on its own, but without food and water, it will die again after a few days." His voice was choked with a despair and an emotion she never thought Ares capable of. "I can keep it alive with my own power, but without her soul, what's the point?"

"Issa could do it." Gabrielle told him.

Ares reacted like he had been stabbed with a knife as he snapped in response, "Yeah, well I'm not Issa, am I?! I don't have any power in the underworld or over it. I've been trying since it happened."

"Well, I hope you're happy you son of a bitch! The only man who can save her is being beaten and tried by a group of thugs who would love nothing else but to see him up on a cross! So what are you going to do about it?" She taunted him, hoping the anger she could generate in him would move him to action and save both Issa's and Xena's lives.

But he collapsed in despair after hearing it. "Nothing." He said. "I can't do a damn thing about it. My father's pulling out all the stops on this, and it would be like trying to stop a stampede of elephants by just standing in front of them. He's going to make sure Issa's crucified." Then he wept in despair, "And Issa's going to let him. I have even less power over my father than I do over Hades."

"So you're not even going to try?" She said in disgust. "You're pathetic."

"Yeah," he responded. "That's what she was trying to tell me too. I'm pathetic." He agreed.

"Damn you, Ares!" Gabrielle swore at him in rage. "My best friend is lying on the ground and will be dead in three days because of you, you son of a bitch! Now you listen to me! You're going to get up, and you're going to find a way to bring her soul back! And if you can't do it, you're going to find someone who can, or I swear, I'll do everything within my power to make your immortal life a living hell from here to eternity!"

Strangely, that brought an ironic chuckle from the god on his knees. "Now you show some promise." He remarked quietly. Then he stood up and said almost imperceptibly, "I do know of someone." He then began to walk in the direction of the garden's entrance.

"Where are you going?!" She demanded from him in confusion.

"Stay with her, Gabrielle." He said. "I can't bring her back, but I know a God who can. I'm going to go talk to him right now. I've got to warn you though, it's a long shot. I doubt I'm on his list of favorite people at the moment. His guards may not even let me ask, but he's supposed to be willing to listen to anyone who approaches him with a petition. Let's both of us hope that's true. For Xena's sake."

"Why? Who are you talking about?" Gabrielle asked in confusion.

"Iesous' father." Ares responded, then left the garden on foot in the direction of the temple of I Am.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Xena had watched the ferry come and go across the Styx River so many times she had lost count. Each time it came back, Charon the ferryman looked even more annoyed, so it was no surprise when he returned to the dock again and, while the other recently arrived souls boarded the black ferry, looked at her and the young woman who was standing next to her and asked in frustration, "Hey! You two gonna get on board or just stand there for all eternity?!"

The truth is, Xena didn't know how to answer him. She had no weapons with her and no armor, but was dressed much like the young dark haired woman next to her in a simple white dress with sleeves that covered her whole form.

She looked at the young woman next to her, and took her hand in her own squeezing it firmly but gently. Her hair and eyes were very much like Xena's own, but her aquiline nose and fairer complexion she had inherited from her Roman father.

The dark robed, zombie faced Charon waited for an answer, but when none was forthcoming, he gave up and continued to waive the rest of the load of souls onto his boat; after he received his fee of course. He even considered waiving his fare for the two women on the bank of the river since the one hadn't even been born yet, and the other had already paid her way through the first time. He could be reasonable. Maybe they just needed to come to grips with where they were. It happened sometimes. It didn't matter. Everyone eventually got on the ferry, even if he had to be a little more charitable than his reputation called for sometimes. Not everyone was lucky enough to die with a wallet on them, after all, and they'd already had a bad enough day if they managed to be at the Styx dock in the first place.

"Should we mother?" The young woman asked her, but Xena couldn't speak. Her eyes returned to the darkly flowing waters of the Styx as they disappeared deeper into the underworld.

The truth was she didn't want to go on, though reason told her neither of them could just stay on the river's bank forever either. And there was another truth she had to face as well which could very well damn her more than anything else she'd ever done in her life once she set foot on the ferry again. She was the reason why her daughter was here with her. She had caused her daughter's death.

She had been told again and again by Hera, by Ares, and even by Iesous himself not to try to interfere, and she wouldn't listen. She had disobeyed all the gods that mattered, and now she and her daughter were going to pay the price. Even Hades himself couldn't be too thrilled with her for trying to protect Iesous. At least her daughter, whom she hadn't even had the chance to name, would be so innocent and pure Hades would have to allow her into the Elysian Fields. As for Xena herself, there would be no escaping it this time. Not after this last great sin. Nothing good she had ever done could ever make up for this.

And so she was in no great hurry to board the ferry. She wanted to spend as much time, an eternity if possible, with her daughter before she would never see her again. Even if it was just sitting or standing on the bank of the River Styx holding her hand.

"Not yet, daughter." Xena finally answered, a tear in her eye as she did. "Just let me spend a little while longer with you."

"Alright, mother." The young woman smiled sweetly, her voice light and musical.

Ares walked the entire way from the garden to the steps of the temple. Dawn was beginning to lighten the skies as the sun attempted to rise over the deserts to the east, the dark, rainless storm clouds fighting it every step of the way. He looked up at the doors of the temple, took a deep breath, and then started up the stairs towards them.

He had no idea what he was going to say or offer Iesous' father that could possibly move the Most High God to grant his petition. For all he knew, he was likely to be cast into Tartarus himself and held there just for setting foot in this place. "Is Xena really important enough to me for me to risk that?" He asked himself, debating it. "I guess the question is really, 'Can I live the rest of my immortal life with what I did to her?'" Then he finally settled on his answer and put his foot on the steps and began to climb.

Funnily enough, he would have just transported himself up to the temple complex the way he usually moved himself from place to place, but for whatever reason it didn't work that way here, at least not for him. Something was restraining him from doing anything else but taking the hard slow way. "Man, this is a pain in my ass." He said to himself as he climbed the steps to the temple doors.

The doors were shut to those who couldn't pass straight through them. He decided to try his luck and see if his inability to just "pop" anywhere he wanted to extended to passing through the doors of the temple. But as he reached the top step to the entryway, two beings materialized in front of him. They were large, muscular, wore red and black armor and tunics, and sported large black wings from their backs. Each had a sword drawn and they crossed their blades in front of the doors barring his way.

"You aren't welcome here, rebel." Growled one of the burly guards at him.

"Yeah, I got that thanks." Ares responded, annoyed. "But I've got some business with your boss inside, so would you please put your little swords away, and let me pass?"

"What business could you possibly have with the All Sovereign God, rebel?" Asked one of the winged guards as he turned his sword threateningly towards Ares throat.

Ares batted the sword to the side with his hand, and said, "That's Olympian god of war to you, wing boy!" He snapped at him. "And I've had a really bad night and am in no mood for two security guards on a power trip! So if you really don't want a thrashing here in front of your boss, I suggest that you step aside before I lose my temper, which, I might add I am this close to doing." He finished his rant but pinching two fingers together minisculely close in front of them.

The two guards looked at Ares blankly. Then they laughed. "I like you. What's your name, rebel?" The one who had pointed his blade at Ares asked as he lowered it.

"Ares." Ares said through clenched teeth. "And I wasn't born when this so-called rebellion happened. I had nothing to do with it. I didn't even know about it until just recently. So please, stop calling me 'rebel.'"

"You still haven't answered my question, Ares." Said the guard. "What business do you have inside?"

Ares calmed himself down. Xena's depending on me for this, he reminded himself. He then said in as even of a tone as possible, "I need to make a request on behalf of a friend. There's something that she needs that I just can't do for her."

Then, there wasn't so much of a voice as a feeling that ran through all three of them. The reality around them vibrated, and Ares could feel it at the foundations of his own being, It was a single question. "Why?"

It took a minute for Ares to register what had just happened. He went through all possible answers, but now that he had gotten the attention of the God he wanted, he realized deep within himself that anything else but the absolute truth would leave him and Xena up the Styx without a paddle. So he reached deep into his own heart and bared it for the Most High to hear. "I, uh..." He took a deep breath and let it out as the words wanted to choke him. "Because I love her, and I murdered her out of a jealous rage. Her death and the death of her child is my fault." It hurt to say it out loud as he confessed his crime of passion and was forced to confront it. He had never confessed anything to anyone, and had rarely been held accountable for any evil he had done to anyone before.

There was no response for several minutes as it seemed like the Most High was considering his answer.

"Let him enter. I will hear his petition." Came the response.

The guards looked stunned, but immediately sheathed their swords and moved to open the doors as Ares stood watching in confusion. "Can't I just pass through the wood and enter the courtyard?" He asked.

"Yeah, you could, if you just wanted to enter the mortal copy of the temple. But that's for the mortals." The guard responded. "You're a god, so you're going to the real thing. Good luck."

"Uh, thanks." Ares responded, all of his usual swagger and bluster slowly draining away as the doors opened and all he saw beyond was pure light. "Okay, I can do this." He said, and then the god of war walked through the doorway and into the throne room of the father of the man he helped condemn to death. This isn't going to be pretty, he thought to himself.

When Charon came back from his last run across the Styx, a third person was standing on the bank of the river next to the two women who had seated themselves to watch the river. As he brought the empty ferry over to the dock, he realized it was a man with a beard wearing a long, ankle length tunic.

As Charon looked the man up and down trying to figure him out, he noticed the tell tale holes in the wrists and ankles that came from a crucifixion, except this guy looked like the executioners must have been in a really bad mood. His head still bore the marks of several sharp instruments or something that had been pressed into his scalp, and Charon could see even under the tunic that they had beaten the hell out of him with a scourge. There was a small stab wound in his side where it looked like a spear had been jabbed up into his heart. "What did this poor guy do to deserve that?" He wondered to himself as he docked the ferry, and opened the gate to let the next group of souls on board.

On the shore, Xena couldn't meet the eyes of the brutally beaten man in front of her. She knew who he was as he came up and sat down next to them. She could see his wrists and his ankles, and the rest of the wounds on him and knew he had suffered far more than anything she had ever gone through.

"It's a good view of the river, isn't it?" Iesous said as he picked up a stone and slinged it, skipping it across the dark water.

"Yeah." She responded, keeping her eyes on the water. "So, you're here now." It was a statement, not a question.

"I'm here now." He confirmed.

"So now what happens?" She asked, picking up her own stone and throwing it into the slowly moving river.

"Right now, we talk." Iesous told her. Then he said, "After that, I go see Hades." And his tone of voice became low and ominous.

"Yeah, I'm trying to put that off for as long as I can myself." Xena told him, not understanding his meaning.

"Xena, do you trust me?" He asked her.

"I did." She told him. "But what does that matter now? We're both here."

"Do you remember what I said? Do you remember who I am?" And that same reality bending experience moved through her as he said it. "Do you believe that I am who I said I am?" He asked her sincerely.

The waves of existence moved through her whole being and the nearly spent ember of hope relighted into a tiny flame. "I... I know who you are, Iesous. I know you're the Avatar of the Most High God. I've seen what you can do, and the kind of power you can wield in his name."

"So I ask you again, Xena, do you trust me?" He asked her again.

Xena reached deep within herself and found something that had been long buried, something that she realized had almost been lost and responded, "Yes, Iesous. I trust you."

He then pulled the sleeve of his tunic back and showed her the bloody hole in his wrist. "Do you see this, Xena?"

Xena looked at the wound from his crucifixion. It was horrible to see, even worse than her own had been before he had removed them. "Yes. They crucified you. They butchered you and hung you up for the world to see."

"I was a sacrifice, Xena. Instead of the blood of countless animals, just one sacrifice. One final passover lamb for all eternity. One sacrifice for the sins of the world world, every human being who has ever lived. Do you understand what this means?" He asked, looking for her comprehension.

Comprehension came to her slowly, but like the breaking dawn. "It means your sacrifice covers all of my sins too." She said, tears coming to her eyes. Her voice began to break up with emotion as she said, "It means I'm... I'm..."

"It means you are forgiven and absolved of all of your sins, Xena, because of my death. With my death, I have given you the redemption from Tartarus you so desperately wanted. Do you still want it?" He asked.

"Yes." She said, overcome with emotion.

He bent down and scooped up some water from the Styx with his hand and poured it over Xena's head and said, "With this water I wash all of your sins away and join your being to my own."

"Can I be washed too?" Came the voice of the young woman next to Xena. Iesous looked to her mother, and Xena nodded. And Iesous repeated the process with her. Then he took the index finger of one hand, and dipped it into the wound on his wrist, covering it with the blood which was still fresh from it. He then traced a simple cross on the forehead of both women. "Now you are sealed with my blood forever. Your lives are now bound to mine. Because I live, you will live. When I rise, you will rise too. We are inseparable forever." He told them solemnly. "And when the time is right, I will bring both of you into the presence of our father and just as you and I are now one, so you will be one with him, because I am one with him."

"So what happens now?" The young woman asked.

Iesous stood up from where he sat and said again, "Now, I deal with Hades. Would you ladies care to join me?" He bent down and offered Xena his hand. She took it and he raised her to her feet.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Gabrielle continued to kneel by the body of her friend on the stone path of the garden as the dark, cloudy dawn broke an angry red over the city. She waited, and waited, and waited for something to happen. But her friend, her best friend, continued to sleep as the city awoke from the religious feasts of the night before. She continued to sleep, and Gabrielle watched and continued to wait, not moving from her side.

Ares hadn't returned after he walked off. She laughed at herself. She really shouldn't have expected anything more from him. "Right. He's going to see Issa's father." She scoffed at herself more than him. "And I actually believed him." She shook her head in disgust at his selfish cowardice. "I hope he gives you what you deserve, you bastard." She cursed Ares' name and spat on the ground.

She couldn't cry any more. All of her tears had been spent, first on her powerlessness and failure at being able to do anything to prevent Issa's arrest in the garden, then at finding her best friend lying in a coma in the middle of the same garden at the hands of Ares. It was a surreal feeling as all of her worst nightmares suddenly came into existence and became the life she was living.

Issa had taught that she should love her enemies. He believed it so strongly that he refused to allow his followers to fight for him when they came to arrest him. She wondered what he thought now that he was in their hands. Would he be so forgiving when they nailed him to a cross? Or would he really let it get that far?

The worst part about all of it was that she had failed. The feelings of failure, and shame, and guilt ran through her soul and fed it a lethal dose of their poison. "I'm so sorry, Xena." She whispered over the body of her friend. "I'm so sorry I wasn't here for you. I watched Issa like you wanted me to, and I couldn't stop them from taking him. And then I couldn't stop Ares from doing this to you. It's all my fault. I'm so, so sorry."

"Issa's father." She said again to herself. "What an idiot I was. Why would he listen to you or any of us right now?" She said to herself, her voice cracking and radiating the pain she felt. "Not with his son about to be crucified."

"Still, Ares may not have followed through on his promise," she reasoned, "but he might have had the right idea. Issa's father is the only god right now who even can or would help if he's anything like Issa."

She looked up to the sky, and began to ask for help, "Look, I know you've got bigger concerns right now, and I know we failed Issa and you miserably last night. But if there's anything you can do to help my friend, even to just help me move her somewhere safe..." She couldn't finish her thought, and dropped her head. "I'm probably one of the last people you want to hear from right now, and I'm not even a Judean. But please, help us. You're the only one who even can."

Then, off to her left past one of the larger olive trees she heard the sounds of a large man breaking down loudly into tears and sobbing. It was so loud and so mournful that she turned her head to see who else's world was shattered that Friday morning, and she instantly recognized the form of the big burly fisherman crouched on the ground in the very spot where the man he had left everything for had been arrested. He was covering his face in his hands, but there was no doubt as to who it was.

"Petros?!" She called out to him. But the big man didn't respond, continuing in his deeply pained grief. Then she shouted his name as loud as she could to get his attention, "PETROS!"

Then he took his hands away from his face, and looked off to his right to see the blond Greek woman still kneeling next to someone lying on the ground. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and got up onto his feet, hurrying over to where Gabrielle was.

"Gabrielle?" He asked her. His eyes were red, and he looked as if his whole world had comecrashing down in upon him. But he then looked down at the woman lying on the ground and went down on his own knees to check the woman's pulse and breathing, "Xena? What happened to her, my friend?" He asked Gabrielle.

"She... She was attacked. I can't wake her up, Petros." She told him.

Petros nodded. He began to put his hands on her, but then stopped himself. "I don't know... I don't..." He began to say, but he was obviously struggling with something. "Yeshua... I... I don't know if his father will hear me right now if I pray to him, Gabrielle. I didn't..." Fresh tears came to his eyes. "I didn't stay by him. I..."

"It's okay, Petros." She told him gently, but firmly. "I don't know if he wants to hear any of us right now." She told him, compassion and understanding for the man rising within her. "Someone already tried, but she's still out." She told him, though she left out who.

He nodded. "We need to move her from here before the rest of the city awakens." He told the Greek woman. "We can take her back to the upper chamber where we ate last night. The owner was a friend of Yeshua's. He'll be willing to help." He then put one arm under Xena's shoulders and another under her legs and hefted her up into his arms as though she were a child. "Come with me." He told her, and began to walk quickly with his charge towards the city streets.

Gabrielle got up and followed close behind him.

Ares found himself standing in a the great hall of a temple more beautiful yet also still more, well, "classy" than anything any of his own family could boast of, and the whole thing seemed to be made of light, and translucent golden glass, and there was gold used liberally everywhere reflecting the light. I Am seemed to be into light and it put anything his brother Apollo might come up with to shame.

There was also music that seemed to come to his ears, and then it seemed to move through him and fill his whole being. The whole feel of the throne room seemed to radiate light, and warmth as well as justice and mercy. All of which things he had steadfastly avoided in the décor of his own temples. But there was also one more thing it radiated which couldn't be mistaken, and that was something he could immediately respect: undeniable and absolute power. The Most High's throne room gave Ares the feeling that he had no idea what omnipotence truly was before setting foot in it.

The hall was empty of any other gods or winged guards as he walked along its gilded glass floor towards what looked like a great white marble throne with gold highlights. Strangely, the throne seemed empty for the moment as he approached it.

"So what do I do? Just wait here until the Most High gets back from lunch?" Ares asked.

"State your request, son of Zeus." Came the instruction as it moved through the foundation of his being, and he knew its source was the same as the one who had granted him access to the temple.

"I'm here to ask that the soul of Xena be returned to her body." He said flatly.

"You were the one who separated the two, were you not?" Existence asked him.

"You know that I was." Ares responded, though all traces of his usual bluster and swagger were erased from his voice. When the presence didn't respond, he answered the question straight and said, "Yes."

"Why do you ask for this?" The Most High asked again. He then elaborated on his question. "You knew nothing about me or about my rule until recently, so I will not judge you based on your crimes against me."

"That's fair." Ares remarked as he listened.

"But your crimes against human beings, your selfishness, your murders, and every other evil and deviant thing which you have done to them all in the name of amusing yourself, especially this one woman in particular; all of these are well known to me. I created Tartarus for gods like you. Why do you, the god of war for the Greeks, risk my judgment to come here and ask this favor of me?"

Ares knew, somewhere inside of himself he knew that this was likely to be I Am's response. He had even prepared himself for it. But to hear it, to feel it within himself, it brought an overwhelming sense of shame and guilt like he had never experienced before. Xena would die, not because of any evil she had done, but because of every evil he had done to her and everyone else.

I Am remained silent as Ares came to grips with his new reality. He had condemned himself by coming here. He had to salvage whatever could be salvaged so that he didn't do the same for the woman he loved. "Look, I know the kind of god I am and what the crap I've done. Saying sorry for it right now is kind of pointless at this point. It's done, and if you want to send me to Tartarus for it, I can't say you don't have the reason or right to do it. But this isn't about me. It's about Xena. You know the thing she wanted most in the world was redemption from everything I ever encouraged her to do. She thought she might have a chance with you and Issa. So damn me if you're going to, but at least save her."

"Right now, this is about you, Ares." The Most High insisted. "Why, knowing what would happen, did you risk coming here for her?"

You've got to be kidding me! Ares thought to himself, but I Am was still waiting for an answer. Okay, he's into the truth? Fine. "I love her." Ares told him. "I love her and if damning me to Tartarus will save her then so be it." The reality of it hit him, and even as he said it the depth of his feeling felt like a punch in the gut. "I would die if it would bring her back." He said more softly. "She deserves at least that.

I Am remained silent as Ares came to terms with his feelings. It was something he had refused to really admit to himself before as tears came to his eyes. "She deserves better than this. She deserves better than the kind of jerk I've always been to her. Save her, and I'll gladly walk into Tartarus and chain myself to the fire. And when she's awake again, make sure she gets the kind of man or god she deserves to be with." He told the God of existence around him.

Then Existence responded to the plea of Ares' heart, "Because you have offered to redeem her at the cost of your own immortal life, I will grant you this request. But your crimes against mankind will not and cannot go unanswered." He told him.

Ares being stoic at that point. There was nothing more to be done, and there was no escaping the judgment of this God. "I understand." He told him.

"You will be stripped of your immortality and divinity, Ares. And you will learn what it is to suffer as a mortal. And then when you are old, and have filled up that suffering within yourself, you will die as a mortal. When that time comes, you will stand before me in judgment again and I will revisit your case. You are dismissed from my presence."

And with that Ares found himself standing on the stairs of the temple complex in front of the doors to the complex. The sun overhead was obscured by the dark clouds which his father had brought upon the city. The air around him felt strangely cold.

Temple priests passed around him, and as he looked he saw looks of disdain and disapproval in their faces as they passed him by. "They can see me." He said to himself. He flexed his fingers and looked around him. He could feel the air rush in and out of his lungs as he breathed, and his heart was beating quickly in his chest as it pumped blood throughout his body. He felt a little light headed and dizzy.

It wasn't the first time he had been made mortal for one reason or another, but he knew there was no way back to Olympus this time. Though as he looked at his father's storm clouds overhead, he realized that might not be such a bad thing after all.

He debated for a minute about what to do from there. If I Am kept his word, she should be waking up soon. He doubted he'd be on the list of people she'd want to see. "I have nowhere to go." He said to himself. And it was then that the former god of war realized for the first time in his life he was truly alone.

It was then he heard the commotion coming from the nearby garrison. He had a sick feeling that he knew what was causing it. With nowhere else to go, he started in the direction of the angry shouts and yelling in Greek..

The gates of Hades were tall and imposing in the dark and gloomy underworld. There appeared to be no gaps and no bars like one would normally think of gates. Instead, they were solid and appeared as though they were made of some kind of black, glossy stone that swung only one way. They permitted entry into Hades' realm, but no exit.

It wasn't the first time Xena had seen them, she remembered, but Iesous stood looking at them with... what? Awe? Wonder? Disgust? His face was impassive as she tried to guage his feelings at seeing them.

Next to them sat the monstrous three headed dog, Kerberos, which Hades had chained there to guard the gates. When the three of them had approached after stepping "off" of the water of the River Styx the animal had snarled and snapped at them in the same way it did for every other soul that approached the impenetrable gates of the dead. And then it began to sniff the air like any other hound Xena had ever seen, except it did so with three noses as it picked up a scent it seemed to recognize. Then Kerberos barked excitedly as it sniffed towards the three of them and its noses stopped at Iesous. The animal then sat on his haunches and three tongues came out as the dog's tail smacked the ground happily. One of the heads barked towards Iesous again, and the animal got down on its belly waiting for a response from him.

"Well, that's new." Xena remarked. "I don't think I've ever seen him do that before, not even for Hades."

Iesous had walked over to the animal and scratched behind the ears of one of Kerberos' heads and the animal's tail wagged furiously as another of its heads attempted to lick Iesous' hand. "That's because a dog knows who his real master is and isn't." He turned and said to Xena, then turned back to the animal in front of him and said, "Good boy, Kerberos. Good boy." He then took the chain which had bound the animal in each hand and pulled on it. The links which held the chain shattered beyond repair. "Stay, Kerberos." He told the animal firmly, and the dog didn't move, but held its ground obediently. It was after this that he came back to stand with them in front of the gates. "I came to release those falsely imprisoned here," he offered to the two women as an explanation for his actions, "all of them."

"What do you mean falsely imprisoned?" Xena asked him. "There are souls here that have committed real atrocities on earth."

"Yes, there are." He agreed looking at her directly. "But this place was originally only meant to be for souls to rest until they are returned to their bodies. My father didn't place these gates here when he created this place, these were Hades' own doing. What Hades has done is to turn this realm into a maximum security prison for his own personal amusement out of spite for his brothers and the lot he was given to govern. Death was meant as a mercy to mortals when they first sinned. It was intended to free a soul from its karma, not to chain it to it for eternity. It is partly because of Hades that the cycle of suffering continues among mortals as he permits some to be reborn according to their actions, and some to suffer horribly because of their actions, and some few to be given a modicum of peace in a dreamlike fantasy according to his whim." Iesous' voice grew angrier and harder with each word he spoke. "But no more." He said, a fire burning in his eyes.

"What are you going to do?" She asked him.

Iesous raised his hand and then made a swatting motion towards the imposing, intimidating gates. With an explosive crash the gates fractured and cracks appeared throughout them. He made one more swatting motion with his hand, and the gates exploded inwards with a sound like a hundred bolts of thunder all at once. When the dust settled, the gates of Hades were no more.

"Kerberos, heel." Iesous told the dog, and it got up, shook its heads, and immediately came to heel next to Iesous' side. Without another word, he proceed past the damaged, empty hinges where the gates once stood, and Xena and her daughter continued after him.

Ares stood on the hill the locals called "The Skull" staring at the middle of three rough hewn wooden crosses which the Romans had erected just before noon. It was now more than three hours past. He had watched the whole drama unfold silently that morning from the beginning of Iesous' trial to when he had said in a quiet, strangeled voice, "Father, I commit my spirit into your hands," and then died from the severe, brutal wounds he had received.

Ares had been mostly stoic and mute as he watched it all unfold. He might have found the man's scourging entertaining only hours before, but just then he felt very little as he watched it. No, that wasn't quite right, he had felt something, but he was so unused to the feelings he was now experiencing as a mortal he couldn't quite put a name to them yet. Whatever they were called they were uncomfortable and he found he didn't like them.

He could feel the presence of his own father and his irrational wrath on this man everywhere. It felt like madness was in the air and it was driving otherwise rational people in the crowds into a frenzy, calling for the crucifixion of an otherwise innocent man. It grew heavier and heavier throughout the day until it became tangible and manifest as a thick darkness which had covered the whole city for the past three hours.

The hatred for the man on the cross was palpable and expressed in the taunts and jeers of the supposedly "holy" men who had threatened an insurrection if the governor hadn't bent over and ordered the man's crucifixion. But he had to give the man kudos for at least trying to keep it from happening. In the end, nothing anyone did to try and prevent it mattered as nails were driven into the man's wrists and ankles, and a spear was shoved into his side just to make sure he was dead. "Nice touch, dad." Ares said sarcastically in disgust.

A massive earthquake followed Iesous' death and nearly knocked Ares off his feet. That was when the sky cleared, and Ares couldn't feel Zeus' presence anywhere any more. It was strange. He didn't know what it meant. He wasn't sure if he cared any more.

After that, the only people left on the hill were the executioners, the victims, and those waiting to take the bodies if the Romans would let them. Ares kept his eyes on a group of people who approached Iesous' cross and showed a written letter to the head soldier. The man took the letter and read it, and then gave the order to let them take down Iesous' body.

It was two old men, a couple of women, and a teenage boy that were trying to pull the body off the cross as Ares watched. As could be expected, it wasn't working all that well, and the soldiers did nothing to help. He became frustrated with their indifference, and yelled at them in their own language which he found he could still remember, "Hey! It's a couple of old men and some women who've already had the worst day of their lives. Why don't you jokers stop standing around and give them a hand?!"

The soldiers turned to look at the strangely dressed man who had yelled at them in Latin with somewhat amused but also annoyed looks on their faces. Their own day had been hard enough as the centurion in command yelled back, "What's it to you, Greek?! If you love them so much, why don't you give them a hand?!"

Fine. He decided, and he went over to the struggling group. The teenaged kid was up on a ladder trying to pull Iesous' wrists off of the spikes which held them there with no success, and only ended up covering himself and his cloths with the man's blood.

"Hey, kid come down. Let me give you a hand." He called up to the kid, who looked down at him, his eyes red from the lack of sleep and the tears which had been shed. It looked like he had lost his best friend that day. As Ares looked up at the body of the man on the cross, he realized that's exactly what had happened.

The kid nodded, and came down, and Ares took his place up on the ladder. He went up and looked at the way the wrists had been nailed. The Romans who did it knew what they were doing, he took note, as the nail had been driven through the wrist bones to secure the body to the wood. In order to free the wrist, the nail had to be driven back out from the other side.

"Hey, can I get a hammer?" He called down to whoever was paying attention.

Much to his surprise, one of the soldiers came over, picked up the hammer which had been lying on the ground, and handed it up to him. "Thanks." He responded as he took it. He then went to work on the nail from the opposite side of the wood.

"Man, this would have been easier yesterday." He commented as he hit the nail again and again as hard as he could to drive it back out. No one could ever accuse Ares of being physically weak, even as a mortal I Am had allowed him to retain some of his physical strength in proportion to his mortality. But as he swung the hammer in the awkward and unwieldy position his arm was forced into on the ladder, his arm began to ache with each blow, and his legs began to ache as he held himself precariously on the ladder. But in spite of the pain he continued to work until the nail was pushed through the wood and he was able to work the rest of it out with his own hands. He then carefully pushed the nail back through Iesous' wrist and it came out with a sucking sound as he let it fall to the ground.

The work was hard. It was hard and it hurt as he watched the nail fall. "Man, is this really worth it? I could just take a sword and hack off the wrists and be done with it." He asked himself. Then he saw the eyes of those who watched him work, and the gratitude that filled them for the ethnic stranger that had come to help.

"Fine." He said to himself again, and climbed down with the hammer to move the ladder to the other side. "One down, two to go." He said.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Iesous marched through the bowels and gloomy corridors of the realm of the dead. Every time he passed someone who was in chains or suffering for some long forgotten evil he would look them in their eyes, show them his wrists, and tell them, "The evil you did in life has been paid for in full." Then he would ask them, "Do you believe me?" When they nodded, he would then ask "Do you want to be set free?" Xena hadn't seen anyone turn down his offer as he smashed chain after chain and ended the torment of countless souls. When they were freed, he would then tell them, "Follow me." And then they would fall in line behind him.

Hades' prison guards stood by powerless as Iesous moved from person to person, freeing each one right in front of them. The first one they came across tried to say something, but all Iesous had to do was give him a look, and the ghoul was silenced. Some seeing what was happening even chose to assist him by unlocking the prisoners from their chains. Iesous only nodded in acknowledgment as these too came into step behind him.

The army of freed souls grew first by the hundreds, and then by the thousands, and then Xena could no longer keep track as it kept growing and growing until they arrived at the brooding, imposing palace of Hades with a massive army the likes of which would cause even the most hardened warrior shake with fear.

As Xena, her daughter and Iesous stood at the head of the army of souls, Iesous turned to the warrior woman and said, "This is where we must part for a time, Xena." He told her.

"What do you mean?" She asked him, not understanding.

"This is my mission to the dead, not to the living." He told her.

She looked at him in confusion. "Our bodies were killed, Iesous, by Ares."

"They were." He responded, and the meaning of what he said became clear to her.

Iesous nodded, "These have no bodies to return to," he said gesturing to those behind him. "Yours are still living."

"How?" She asked, the memory of her death fresh in her mind as she relived the thrust of the sword through her unborn child's form and then up into her heart.

"I would ask Ares that question when you see him." Iesous answered her.

"Ares?" She asked. "Why him?"

"I think you'll find him much changed from the last time you saw him." Iesous told her in response. Then his tone changed and he said, "I want you to do something for me, Xena. I want you to forgive Ares for what he did, for everything he has ever done to you and your daughter. I want you to forgive him, just like I forgave you."

Xena didn't respond for several minutes as she wrestled with her emotions and looked at her daughter. "I'm sorry. It's just difficult." She said.

"The cycle of hatred and violence can only end with forgiveness and compassion. This is how the evil in a man's heart is conquered, with forgiveness and lovingkindness. Ares has much thinking to do right now, and he sacrificed everything he held dear to give you another chance at life, and with you your daughter as well." Iesous told her.

"What do you mean?" She asked in surprise.

"I think you should sit down with him and ask him yourself." Iesous told her again. "Listen to what he has to say for himself."

"Alright." Xena relented. "I guess this means I'll get the chance to name you after all." She told the young woman next to her.

"I'd like that, mother." She said. "What are you going to name me?" She asked.

Xena didn't know. In all this time of her carrying her daughter, she hadn't thought of any names yet. Then Iesous spoke again. "May I make a suggestion?" Xena nodded and he continued. "In the Scriptures of my people, the name of the first woman was 'Havah,' though in Greek it would be pronounced 'Eva.'"

"Eva." Xena repeated, and her daughter smiled a beautiful innocent smile at the name. "Thank you, mother." She said.

"So, what happens now?" Xena asked him.

"Now, I render judgment on those who had been charged with the governance of this world. But you and Eva will return to those who love you most on earth." Iesous responded.

"Will we see you again?" She asked.

"Oh, yes." He said. "Look for me in a couple of days, after I've had a chance to set things right here and elsewhere. Remember what I said about Ares. He's not the same man he was."

"I will." She agreed.

Then Iesous placed the palms of each hand on both Xena's and Eva's foreheads, and Xena experienced a tugging, and then a pulling, and then she felt herself being dragged forcibly up and away and out of the underworld.

When she and her daughter were gone, Iesous turned back to the palace and with a grim, determined look in his eye said, "Now, down to business."

Gabrielle had been kneeling next to Xena's unmoving form for hours as the warrior princess' still form lay on cushions which had been laid out on the floor of the chamber. Petros stood watch near the door, and did what he could to provide Gabrielle with anything she needed. As the day went on, one by one Iesous' other followers trickled in to try and find some comfort with each other on a day which seemed completely without. The one glaring exception was Yehudah from Kriot, but no one asked what had happened to him. No one mentioned his name at all.

Finally, as night began to fall, Iesous' mother, Iohannes, and Mariam of Magdala joined them accompanied by another man who Gabrielle knew, and who she could see was somehow visibly exhausted. With fire in her eyes she meant to yell at him, but then she looked into his own. There was a weariness, a pain, a deep abiding sadness, and more... a mortality in them which hadn't been there before. Ares' hands had open blisters on them, from what she didn't know. When Gabrielle saw all of this, she couldn't bring herself to say anything, but then just turned back to her vigil over her friend in silence. Whatever Ares had experienced since last she saw him... All she could feel was pity for what was in his eyes.

"This kind Greek man helped us to take my son down from the cross." She heard Mariam tell Petros. "We wouldn't have been able to move him into the tomb before sundown without his help." And then Gabrielle heard Iohannes and the other Mariam agree. "He has no family anymore, and nowhere else to go." She told him in answer to his question as to why he was there. Petros nodded, and welcomed the man, who gave only a quiet "Thanks." And then went to go and find somewhere to sit down on his own. He hadn't noticed her at all, but the haunted look in his eyes continued as he only stared at the floor, contemplating his fate.

As she turned to look at the man again, it was like watching someone she had never met. In every encounter she had ever had with him, she had never seen him like this. And then it dawned on her as she watched him look at the blisters on his hands like he had never experienced them before, he really did go to see Iesous' father like he said he would. He kept his word. And Gabrielle silently took back everything she had sworn at him in his absence. Whatever Iesous' father had put him through, it looked like he'd been through hell and back and had come out forever changed.

Suddenly Xena's eyes flew open in front of Gabrielle and she inhaled so sharply that the whole room turned to see what had happened to the woman who had been lying so still for so long in the room.

"Xena!" Gabrielle nearly shouted as the warrior woman looked at her, and Ares' head turned in their direction as he shot to his feet to see what was going on, the pain in his hands completely forgotten. "Xena?" He asked, hope in his voice.

Xena blinked her eyes a couple of times, and then slowly sat up and looked around at all those standing there, then finally came to look at the friend who had been standing over her protectively the entire time. "Gabrielle?" She asked groggily.

Gabrielle wrapped her arms around her friend and held her tightly, fresh tears coming to her eyes. "Xena." She said. "I thought I'd lost you." She sobbed. "I thought..."

"I was dead." Xena finished for her. "I... We were." She said, rubbing her still swollen belly as Gabrielle released her embrace. "We saw Iesous in the underworld, Gabrielle." She said. "When we left he was standing at the head of a massive army about to storm Hades' palace."

"An army?" Gabrielle asked. "Where did he get an army from?"

"He's setting everyone in the underworld free. He said he paid for all the evil they'd ever done and they were free. You should have seen it Gabrielle." She told her friend. "He forgave me Gabrielle. He forgave me for everything I've done. He said my karma is completely clean because of his death. I'm free too."

"So what happens now?" Gabrielle asked, wiping her own tears away.

"The gods will be judged. I guess he's going to start with Hades. He said he had some business to attend to, and then we'd see him in a couple of days." Then, remembering something, she asked Gabrielle, her voice becoming somber and serious, "Where's Ares?"

Before Gabrielle could answer, and prepare Xena for what Ares had done, the former god beat her to it.

"I'm here, Xena." Ares spoke up quietly from the other side of the room. All the conversation between the others in the room came to a halt and so his response could be heard clearly, as well as the sadness behind it.

Xena turned her head towards the owner of Ares' voice. Xena looked at him searching his eyes and his expression as he stood there looking at her. After a minute of this she said, "We need to talk, you and I, and soon."

"Okay." He said in response. He seemed so unsure of himself, as though he didn't know what else to say. But there was a little flame of hope there, and as Xena saw it, she found that she didn't want to let it die.

Epilogue

Iesous strode through the grassy gardens of the place in the Underworld the Greeks knew as the Elysian Fields. He went from person to person touching each and returning their memories to them which Hades had stolen. He knew each of these people by name, and many of them knew him as well.

Finally he came to a bald man dressed in yellow robes from the far east who had been sitting quietly cross legged on a rock next to a stream which ran through the garden. His eyes were closed in contemplation.

As Iesous touched the man's forehead, he slowly opened his eyes and looked at him. Then a huge smile broke over the man's face and he said, "My Lord, you have found me at last!"

"Are you ready to come with me, Anandas?" Iesous asked him.

Anandas looked around him, and then looked to the man he had known in life as Issa. "And,my karma?" He asked.

"Gone." Iesous replied, showing him his wrists. "Completely wiped away."

The monk's smile became bigger and brighter as his eyes lit up with joy. "Yes, my Lord. I am ready to follow you now." He said happily.

"Then come, my friend. My father is waiting for us all." He told his old teacher, gesturing to the countless myriads whom he had awakened from Hades' unnatural sleep.

Many months after the events in Hierosolyma, Xena, Gabrielle, Ares, and another older woman who had joined them on the road north came upon the sight of a run down abandoned farmhouse near Amphipolis. Xena bent down and kissed the baby she held in her arms and pointed at the house saying, "See Eva, that's where my grandparents used to live."

"It's not much, is it?" Ares asked as he drove the wagon they rode in down the dirt patch towards the house.

"It's not Olympus, but my brother and I were happy here as children." Xena responded. "It needs some attention, but there's nothing that can't be fixed."

"A lot like us, I think." The older woman joined in. "I think it will be a fine place, and more than we deserve."

"Maybe you're right, mom. Maybe there's not much that's broken that can't be fixed. All it needs is some love and attention." Ares responded with a smile.

"That's still so weird." Gabrielle remarked. "I still don't know if I'll ever get used to this."

Xena ignored them and smiled at her little daughter. "We can be happy here too, Eva. If we work at it, we can all be happy here. Yes we can."

"Still, I never thought I'd see you open to the possibility of becoming a farmer." Gabrielle told him.

"Neither did I." Ares agreed, then his tone became serious, "But at least I was given the chance to." He said as he pulled the horses of the wagon to a stop in front of the house.

"Yes. At least we were both given this second chance." Hera agreed as she looked around contemplatively. "I have no intentions of spending it foolishly."

"Speaking of second chances, Ares, would you hold Eva for me for a second so I can get down?" Xena asked him.

"Come to daddy!" Ares said as he made a face at the little girl that was handed to him and she giggled in response.

"So weird." Gabrielle said as she shook her head. "I'll never get used to that."

THE END


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